It was my great-niece Connie who spotted it - a Red Admiral strangely poised in mid-air, like a kestrel but without its wings moving. Upside-down as well. We crept up, looked more closely and saw what we had feared: it had been trapped by a spider in a large but scarcely visible web.
It appeared to be dead but when I swiped the air nearby, it twitched feebly and then began to struggle. I circled my hand around it and it came free but still attached to pieces of the spider's silk. Down it went but its flapping wings freed it in time to avoid a crash and it escaped a little drunkenly into the safety of some shrubs.
Connie was duly hailed as the Butterfly Saviour but it was a handy lesson for the children, and for all of us there, about the ruthless side of Nature. Most people are naturally kind to animals and rightly so but animals have no reason to be kind to one another and seldom are.
In the moth trap meanwhile, I have had my first visit from one of my Top Moths, the beautiful Black Arches with its bold dazzle camouflage upper wings and a pink-striped body which is normally hidden from sight. This one obligingly perched on the roughly transparent trap-cowl so you can make out the pink through the age-battered plastic.
The only downside to this beautiful creature for me is its dull and inappropriate name, especially in the world of moths where naming has been taken to inspired lengths. The Americans, however, call it the Nun Moth and you can find sites online asking questions such as 'Which is the bug that looks like a nun?' I can't say that it resembles any nuns that I have seen or met, but at least the idea is more interesting that yet another Arches moth, alongside the Light and ubiquitous Dark.
A more serious downside for those who are not simply beguiled by moths is that the species is seen as a threat to hardwood trees, like the Gypsy Moth featured in my last post. The Americans in particular are worried by this; the awful prospect of an invasion of tree-munching nuns.
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