Super-Blue - unparalleled and storming into its eighth year

I don't spend a lot of time speculating about un-knowable things, but I am pretty sure that there is a Moth God, or Gods, with a set-up run along the lines of the immortal Olympians in Ancient Greece. Their speciality was teasing more mortals and turning their assumptions on their head. So it is with me, whenever I make some prediction or other on this blog.

It's all very benign because my assumptions generally involve the season coming to a close and the prospect of shutting up shop as the darker mornings make checking the catch in my light trap later less practical. Thus in my last post, I included an aside about the wonderful Clifden Nonpareil, my favourite moth of all, not visiting me this year after an almost annual appearance since its stunning return from effective extinction brought me my first in 2019.

So to this morning, and roughly halfway through examining the trap, I turned over an eggbox and - bingo! There was the unmistakably vast triangular form of a Nonpareil, which then co-operated helpfully in tickling for further pictures to reveal its glorious blue-banded underwings and soft pastel duck-egg blue underside.

  

You can read a précis of the Nonpareil story here on my ecstatic blogpost back in September 2019 when my first arrived, following a gradual procession of reports of others further South. My latest brings my total in eight years to 18 - and this a moth which for 69 years of my life, I never had any hope of seeing. 

The actual dates of my Clifdens are 17 Sept 2019, 3 Sept 2020 (2), 4 Sept 2020, 5 Sept 2020, 10 Sept 2020, 15 Sept 2020 (2), 18 Sept 2020, 21 Sept 2020, 2 Oct 2020, 21 Sept 2021(3) and 5 Sept 2022. None in 2023 when I was on holiday for some of the Nonpareil season and did little trapping for other reasons including a broken mercury vapour bulb. Then one came on 29 Aug 2024, two last year on 7 Aug and 28 September, and now this one on 12 Oct - much the latest in the series and expanding the Nonpareil 'window' to nearly a week over two months.

Here is another photo emphasising the size of the moth by showing it alongside a dozing Sallow, a pretty standard medium-size UK species. In surface area, the Nonpareil comes close to the two great hawkmoths, the Convolvulus and the Death's Head. Here below, you can see its underside and a rear view:

If I had never caught any other moth in my trap, my cup would overflow with this.