Busy times at my granddaughter's lamp

 

We were back on grandchildren duty this week and so had a chance to enjoy our granddaughter's enthusiasm for her actinic moth trap. This is smaller than my mercury vapour lamp and much less bright to the human eye, both advantages where they live. It is also handily portable when visiting friends and family who don't mind moths being examined over breakfast.

The weather was extremely unpredictable but luckily they have a stout outdoors table which provides a complete umbrella on top of the very effective rain-shield fitted to the trap. It didn't protect the whole area of the patio nearby, however, and the first moth that we saw in the morning was a little Brimstone, apparently drowned in a planter which had filled with rain.

As is so often the case, a bit of gentle prodding showed that the moth was actually very much alive which luckily ended the granddaughter's brief moment of "I'm never going to use the trap again if it drowns moths", commendable in terms of human kindness but a shame if it brought her journey of entomological discovery to an early end. Although up to now her chief pleasure from moths has been having them on her fingers, followed by breeding caterpillars, she now shows tremendous concern for putting them safely back in the wild. She may be just the weapon I need against my robin.

The Brimstone is pictured above, drying out in the care of a Lego man, followed by the actual residents of the trap - a fine Bright-line Brown-eye, a handsome male Muslin with its yellow breeches and complex antennae and a couple of Clouded Drabs. 

More was however to come.

After the children had gone to school, I had a brief moment to conduct a more careful search of the area round the trap, always a worthwhile thing to do. Bingo! On one table-leg was a very pretty Seraphim while a Pebble Prominent, the best moth of the whole haul, had gone to sleep on the pointing of the nearest bit of house wall.

The latter was still there when the granddaughter got home at 3.30pm and here it is on her hand. 

Back home last night, I lit the trap late at 10pm and things got very wet later on. There were half-a-dozen Hebrew Characters and Muslins but this second Seraphim's sadly tattered condition rather sums the current state of moth-trapping here up. 

The other Brimstone, the lovely, lemony butterfly with its scalloped wings and powerful flight, was very much about in the grandchildren's garden during the sunny day which followed the night's rain. I took these photos of the same insect on Honesty from different sides. A Holly Blue and a Peacock were also flitting around but were too restless for me to get a picture.