Pieces of Eight

                               

We have a curious structure in our garden which may one day be famous. Called Fort Hansard, it stands on what is probably the highest-point in our low-lying hamlet and the reason for that is also the origin of its name. My father Richard was a Liberal MP in an era when members were given bound copies of Hansard, the Parliamentary record, and we inherited a veritable shed-load of these handsome books which no-one in the world seemed to want. 

We tried pubs, schools and secondhand bookshops, gave some to family and friends and kept others which included some of the speeches he made, but in the end, we decided to bury the remainder and crown the resulting hillock with a wooden, US Cavalry-style fort. There are an awful lot of subterranean books under the ethereal-looking structure below and our secret hope is that one day archaeologists will stumble upon them and debate why the UK Parliament appears to have met on the outer edge of Oxford between 1966 and 1987.

The reason for telling you this, is that for the first time in our 13 years here, I put the moth trap inside Fort Hansard and its eerie glow, as shown below, brought me yet another wholly new moth, the Figure of Eight above. 

I recognised something wholly unfamiliar when I first it, clinging to the side of an eggbox as shown below. My iPhone's Bug ID came up with the manifestly wrong suggestion of an Oak Beauty, which looks very different and does not fly at this time of the year. But some good, old-fashioned work with the Moth Bible came up trumps and I have, most unexpectedly, notched up my eighth entirely new macro-moth this year.

Here are some further photos which perhaps show the reason for its name more clearly. Meanwhile my pleasure is increased by the interest shown on Upper Thames Moths, albeit for unexpected reasons. The group's tireless expert Dave Wilton commented on the Facebook page:  "Surprising when you consider how much blackthorn you've got close by." This is true, and accounts for the marvellous presence of Black Hairstreak butterflies here. Dave goes on to say that although the Figure of Eight is supposedly a species in serious decline, the Upper Thames is one of its hotspots. He says: "I've trapped three local woods over the past week and it was by far the most numerous moth, with more than 100 coming to light in each location." 

More than 100! And I've had just one...  Well here's some more of it, though I restrained myself from taking a hundred pictures:

A couple of other Upper Thames trappers joined the discussion, each with a solitary arrival like me. Anyway, it's most welcome and joins my much more frequent guest the Figure of 80, below showing (slightly faintly) the reason for its name, a moth which is unrelated except through nomenclature.

The trap has meanwhile remained busy in spite of markedly colder nights. Here are some current regulars, left to right in each line: Cypress Carpet, Satellite, Green-brindled Crescent, Lesser Yellow Underwing, Lunar Underwing, White-spot, Autumnal Rustic, Large Wainscot and Feathered Thorn.

And then: Pale Mottled Willow, Black Rustic, Winter/Autumnal, Red-green Carpet, Rosy Rustic, Autumnal/November, Large Yellow Underwing, Merveille du Jour and Sallow.