Two more Hawks

My biggest regular moth beast, the Privet Hawk, flew in two nights ago, kindly coinciding with US guests, a happy hobby of my moths which seem to sense when we have visitors, high days or holidays. It obligingly perched on their fingers and we also had a Large Elephant Hawk to add its pinky-greeny beauty to the scene.

The supporting cast has been excellent as well and I've been kept busy uploading details of newcomers to iRecord. Among them in order below...

A Green Pug

A distinctively patterned Buff Ermine

And another - the standard type has a scattering of spots overall, whereas these have the strong black cluster in the first case and very little on the forewing in the second

Meanwhile here is the year's first Buff-tip, a marvellously well-camouflaged moth which uncannily resembles a twig.  Alongside it in the eggboxes were a Spectacle, a Marbled Minor, a Turnip moth and a pretty little Grass Rivulet - delightful name.

The Gold Spot is a very welcome visitor as a change from the much commoner Burnished Brass shown in the second picture below. Actually, the position of the camera and the light on the reflective wing scales give this particular example of the BB extra distinction.

On we go with two non-moth guests whose IDs I can now establish speedily thanks to the AI ID button on my iPhone. Behold the natty little bug Glyphotaelius pellucidis and the caddis fly Rhabdomiris striatellus.

Not many more to go now. Here is a neighbourly pair of Large Nutmegs (though my otherwise trusty iPhone insists wrongly that they are Dark Arches). Then comes a Freyer's Pug, a Tawny Marbled Minor, a Bright-line Brown-eye, an Orange Footman and, er, I'm not sure what. The iPhone is still fixated with Dark Arches but I hope to get back here with the right ID soon. 

And so to a very pretty if soberly-coloured Knot Grass and a Common White Wave, gracefully swaying on a rosebush stalk just outside the trap.

Carpet World

The trap has seen dozens, maybe scores of delicate little Green Carpets since the moths began arriving in ernest at the start of May. Now they are being joined by a wider range of their family, named by England's 18th century entomologists after the intricately-patterned carpets then arriving in bulk from the East.

The Sandy Carpet, first picture above, is perhaps my favourite because of its distinctively simple colourway, no black or dark brown even in the outline of the patterns. The Silver Ground Carpet, second pic, follows it closely and certainly wins in the Best Name category. 

Then we have the Common Marbled Carpet - three pics above - which is indeed common here at the moment, half-a-dozen in the eggboxes every morning at the moment, many of them resting in 'butterfly fashion' with wings folded vertically rather than flat across the back or simply laid out horizontally like the Sandy and Silver Ground in my photos.

Moths of all sorts are coming in very good numbers and variety now, as the sunny spell continues and the nights grow warmer. I'm also being much better at sending the daily newcomers to iRecord, helped by the generally trustworthy ID powers of my iPhone - the biggest improvement to my somewhat raggedy processes since I first started trapping and keeping records. Gone, by and large, are those days of puzzling over almost identical photos of different species. Thank you, AI!

Above is a Vine's Rustic, a classic befuddler in the bad old days, and below a Scorched Wing, one of my all-time favourite species. The dazzle effect of the patterns on its wings is textbook.

Next comes an unusually dark and very clear-marked Silver Y, a freshly-emerged Common Carpet, a delicately beautiful Clouded Silver and the year's first Light Emerald.

And finally, a new butterfly species for the year, the good old Red Admiral.  By the state of it, this one is an over-winter hibernator lured out of its long sleep by the May sun.

Hawk Number Two, and other moths

 

The second of my regular hawk moths, the Lime Hawk above, came on our wedding anniversary 12th May, which has a very good record of furnishing lovely and/or interesting new arrivals. Of course like all UK moth enthusiasts,  I long to see the incredibly rare Oleander Hawk which has a similar but grander and more elaborate green colour and patterning. We've even planted an Oleander bush to further this ambition, but it remains extremely unlikely ever to be realised. Still, though common, the Lime Hawk is very nice to be going on with.

The little Agonopterix above (I have guessed propinquella on iRecord) led me a merry dance this morning, taking off from the eggboxes like a rocket when I lifted the trap's lid, and then darting about to various spots on our lawn. I finally exhausted it but the photo is not the best; I think that it was a bit ruffled by the chase.

Maybugs or cockchafers are coming in great and clumsy numbers; I love watching their slow, deliberate movements and waiting for them to unfurl their strange TV aerial antennae. The one pictures, on the edge of an eggbox with a Coronet, has got halfway to that but decided not to give me the full five-star display.

Here are a couple of photo medleys of the many species now arriving in the warm evenings; above from l-r, trop to bottom: White-point, Common Wainscot, Flame Shoulder, Cnephasia stephensiana, Cocylichroa atricapitana, Coronet, Seraphim, Celypha lacunana and a second Seraphim.  Below: Aphomia sociella, a third Seraphim (I like the name), Common Pug, Coxcomb Prominent, another Celypha lacunana, Notocelia cynosbatella, Heart and Dart, Light Brocade and Burnished Brass.

Four more below: The Aganopterix mentioned earlier, a Rustic Shoulder-knot, a Cinnabar and a Dark Marbled Carpet. 

Talking of Cinnabars, we spotted this rather work one in flight on a lovely anniversary walk between Appleford and Sutton Courtenay, a strange mixture of rural beauty, lovely old buildings and gravel extraction. Plus a burly Broad-bodied Chaser. An hour after we watched this darting about, a cousin in Devon sent her own photo of one, below bottom right, asking what on Earth it was.

Finally an Anniversary Slug.  I hope from a distance that it was an interesting caterpillar but no such luck.  Still, all creatures haver their place, in this case helping us to limit the prolific seeding of Cow Parsley or, as the Americans call it more eloquently, Queen Anne's Lace.

Armoured bugs

May has promptly brought the Maybug, the fearsome but placid Cockchafer which Nicholas Tesla famously tried to use to power his model aeroplanes when he was a boy. He never solved the problem of how to get more than one to fly in the same direction. I find it hard enough just to wake them up.

The new month has also brought a return to colder nights and a slowing-down in the number of visiting moths. But there have still been good things.  Just below, for example, is a dainty Red Twin-spot Carpet pretending to be a butterfly and possibly setting a trend. The male Pale Tussock and Brimstone moth below it have adopted the same vertical folded-wing resting position instead of the more usual flat across the back.

Lastly, here are a couple of flies which I can bring you only thanks to my iPhone Bug ID icon which dealt with them promptly: a St Mark's Fly above, appearing promptly on or close to the saint's day on 25 April, and a sp[ecies of Dance Fly, Empis tessellata, which has already been confirmed by one of the kindly experts on iRecord.

Our main concern about flies round here is when the Blandford Fly will appear - a nasty biter which requires the Savlon to be permanently handy, it has spread from Dorset as an unwelcome by-product of otherwise excellent improvements in river water.