Travelling moth

 

Ten years ago, it would have been a big surprise to open the light trap and find the guest shown above. But the Gypsy Moth has staged a dramatic comeback since just before the pandemic, when the trickle of some 30 records since the 1950s began to turn into a flood.

I saw my first example at the grandchildren's home in east London in August 2019 when my keenly entomological granddaughter came rushing out to ask me what it was. A year later, two of them came on the same night to the trap here. I haven't seen any since then but plenty of other people have, across the South of England. News has spread as rapidly, because the Gypsy's caterpillars are a serious threat to many trees and are on the  world list of Top 100 invasive pests. Quite a distinction.

However voracious, the moth is an interesting species with the female only very seldom seen to fly in spite of her having larger and more beautiful white and creamy wings than the male shown here. He gets the terrific antennae instead. There used to be a distinct British sub-species in the Fens but draining and tree clearance led to its extinction with the last one recorded in 1907.  When a colony sprang up in Redbridge, north London, in 1995, it was eradicated by pest controllers. 

Moths such as the Redbridge ones and my visitors are described in Home Office terms as 'immigrants', 'former residents' and 'adventive', the last a term meaning having a toehold but not fully at home. Yet. The way things are going, we will be seeing more and more Gypsies, just as the very destructive Box Moth is clearly here to stay. One last distinction: its tiny caterpillars have a few meals of tree leaves then climb as high as they can and dangle, allowing themselves to be caught by the wind and sometimes blown as far as half-a-mile. An ingenious example of dispersal. 

A head as good as the Gypsy's belongs to the Canary-shouldered Thorn which is coming to the trap in some numbers at the moment and is extremely well-named. I first photo-ed this one at 7.15am before tucking the eggboxes away in our shed, out of reach of the robin. At 5.30pm, it was still around and sound asleep so I took it out on a leaf into the garden for a photoshoot closer to Nature.

Another recent moth which hung about for a whole day and night was the Lesser Swallow Prominent below which I first photographed at 8.15am. 

I was then distracted by other things and it wasn't until the next morning that I went back to the trap, which I had left outside, by which time there had been quite heavy rain.  Guess who was there? the same moth, sound asleep in spite of water drops covering its back like large beads.

More soon on other delightful visitors but to conclude for today, here's a composite of pictures taken during a couple of hours' gardening in the sunshine.  It shows, going across top to bottom, a familiar Peacock butterfly, a Small Skipper, a female Common Blue, a Brimstone, a Mint Moth, a very battered Silver Y moth, a Small White butterfly, a Shaded Broad-bar moth and a Large White. Happy times!