Summer beauties

I promised in yesterday's post to bring you a bit more colour and here we are: some of the stars among moths which have arrived here since early May. One of my runaway favourites called, the Lilac Beauty - above and below with its curious folding of the forewings when at rest. I tried to entice it from the side of the black bowl which isn't brilliant for digital photography, but it skittered off.

The Blotched Emerald is another lovely moth in spite of its name as are the Clouded Silver, Burnished Brass and Green Oak Tortrix micro which follow it, below.

Here are a couple of portfolio pics of other little jewels: the day-flying Scarlet Tiger which I mentioned a couple of weeks back, The White Plume, a Barred Straw like one of those ropy Lysander aircraft the RAF used to drop spies in World War 2, a Blood-vein, the famous Peppered moth and a delightful Blue-bordered Carpet.

Then we have the specially graceful Beautiful China-mark micro, an Elephant Hawk, a Lackey, a Barred Yellow, a very lightly-patterned Buff Ermine, a Single(!)-dotted Wave, an ermine micro of some sort, a second, very battered Beautiful China-mark and a Green Carpet.

My slumbering Peacock butterfly chrysalises are meanwhile proving to be an excellent supply of more original presents than flowers or chocolate when visiting friends. The couple who invited us to lunch on Saturday also got a bonus of four Elephant Hawk moths which had come to the light trap the previous night. They are very docile in captivity and took several minutes to warm up their wings before scooting off into our friends' garden, a lovely spot with an interesting, pure white form of Rosebay Willowherb, the Elephant's favourite foodplant.