Buttoned up

Not being a particular fan of Winter Moths, I have all but moth-balled (ho-hum, no pun originally  intended) the trap for the Winter though I may bring it out next month to create a brightly shining Christmas star. To my surprise, however, I have spent today in the company of not just one Nationally Scarce B moth but two. I was organising piles of old but interesting paperwork in our cobwebby attic when I saw a telltale flutter.

It was the Buttoned Snout, above, a moth which I only met for the first time in April this year when I had second thoughts about checking another little flutter on the bare soil of our vegetable garden. Its distinguished status may be about to change as in recent years it appears to have increased in numbers in parts of the South and Midlands including Oxfordshire Maybe our attic is a key expansion base.

My speculation about that was fuelled by a second modest flutter when I swept behind an archive box and roused the moth in my second picture. This is the standard version of the Button Snout whereas the first one is, I think, the form unicolor. In the standard form, the reasons for the species' name is evident: the smart, shiny button marks on the forewing. Along with the light-coloured streak, they give the moth an air of working on the lobby staff of a grand hotel.

I was very encouraged about this as my archiving task is likely to see me spending rather a lot of time in the roofspace, like Montaigne in his tower though perhaps not so productively. My day was made complete by a hibernating Peacock which got into such a tizz about the attic's light being unexpectedly on, that I let it out of a window into the cold. I never know whether one should do this to creatures woken from hibernation. But at least it wasn't raining, and if it does, the butterfly can surely creep back in.