Showy

 

The first showy moth of the year was snoozing in the eggboxes this morning, an Oak Beauty which I transferred to the beech hedge for a nicer backdrop.  No Photoshopping though, after the Royal photo furore. Actually, Photoshopping is a skill, or possibly dark art, too far for me. I confine my interference to cropping. I am tempted sometimes to add 'warmth' or 'saturation' from the iPhone's editing function, if only because the camera's search for maximum lights plays such tricks with the colour anyway. Compare the beech leaves above with those below. There's not a lot in it but to my eye, the bottom photo is a little washed-out and duller and the top one is closer to the colours I saw.

Another welcome dab of colour was the russet of the Clouded Drab below, often a much duller moth than this example. Update: Thanks very much to my two Commentors below who raised doubts about my ID of this, and rightly. And actually my blundering goes further than that. The two moths are different in spite of their similar colouring and considerably more interesting than I thought.  Both Mothwatch and Stewart were on to the possibility of Red Chestnut and Stewart also wondered if the moth might be the rarer White-marked. 

In fact it turns out to be both.

How so? Well, as I promised in my initial reply below, I put the question to the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog and their skill reveals that we actually have two different moths here. I photographed them at different stages in my examination of the eggboxes but then assumed from their similar colouring that they were the same insect when I looked at the photos quite a lot later while compiling this post. Dave Wilton, the ever-patient webmaster of the UTM blog, wondered first if they were different, suggesting that the first one looked like a Red Chestnut and the second one a White-marked.  Martin Townsend, co-author of the matchless Moth Bible, then confirmed that this is the case.

Thank you all!  And that's a much better result than my original misinformation.

Below the two pictures is an attractive Twin-spotted Quaker, a regular arrival at this time of the year, and following that, a March Moth with its unmistakable zigzags.

The micro below gave me a hard time, as I scrutinised my Micro Bible without success until plumping for a slightly odd example of the familiar Agonopterix alstroemeriana and putting that suggestion to the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog.  The eternally helpful webmaster there, former air traffic controller Dave Wilton, was back speedily with the correct ID and I wasn't far off. The moth is Agonopterix heraclia/ciella and Dave adds interesting additional info, especially on its diet:

Your moth is a rather well-preserved individual of Agonopterix heracliana/ciliella (they've usually lost many of their scales by this time of year, after hibernation, so aren't as well marked as this one). Agonopterix alstromeriana is a much more brightly coloured moth than this which also hibernates, quite a common species which I imagine you will get in your garden too. However, your Alstroemerias are safe because its larvae actually use the far more sinister plant Conium maculatum, otherwise known as Hemlock.

Finally, two of my rivals in terms of getting at the moths. It's impossible to be really cross with a robin but, my goodness, you have to keep an eye on them when examining the eggboxes. One distraction and they're in and out in a flash. One moth fewer for me.

As for the twilight bats, just about discernible below. I cannot really tell how many moths they capture but clearly there are enough to keep them circling round.