Gents' Club Sprawler

  We have had the electricity board here carrying out their five-year cut of treetops which threaten their high voltage power lines. As a result, we have a large pile of chippings on the lawn which offered a good opportunity last night to site my moth trap somewhere different.  Whether moths aim high at light, given the chance, I do not know but it would seem to make sense if the theory that their antennae-based navigation systems are tuned to reach for the moon is correct.

The best result was this Sprawler below, the last moth of my regulars due to arrive and a fine fresh specimen which rewarded the wait. You can get a sense of its hairiness, useful at this chilly time of year, in the second photo and my finger gives an indication of its size in the third.

Another arrival last night is rather similar but has been here quite a few times this Autumn, Blair's Shoulder-knot, but we have a second genuine newcomer for the year, which I had forgotten, in the two photos below that,  in the Mottled Umber with its more relaxed and less dart-shaped appearance and pleasant shades of beige. Bringing up the rear, a Cypress Carpet whose marking are curiously similar to the unrelated Cypress Pug though their caterpillars' diet of cypress is the same. I should have mentioned earlier that the Sprawler is named, not after a tweedy gent in a London club as I once hoped, but because of a strange defensive attitude struck by its caterpillar.

Finally, a moment of swanking: I have unexpectedly got two photographs in next year's calendar of the Friends of the Trap Grounds nature reserve in central Oxford.  I wonder if users will linger a little longer than usual over February and July...