Rainbow nation

We've been back in the world's finest city, Leeds, which was blessed with this rainbow as we drove through, a consolation for the autumn weather which has arrived in the UK. The chillier and wetter nights signal the start of my annual lethargy at trapping. Reports will be less frequent from now on.

Having said that, this Burnished Brass was a joy to behold in the trap this morning, as was the floating baguette of a Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing below. There were at least 75 moths among the eggboxes too, which is very respectable, even if most of the others were the smallish, brownish and greyish brethren who cause me such problems with ID.

Here are some, including a couple of Snouts with their palps - a somewhat mysterious organ of insects - respectively open and closed.  Weather permitting, I shall be lighting the lamp again tonight, as Penny has come back with an exciting pink eggbox, the first time that colour has appeared among the blues, greens, greys and beiges familiar in the trap.

A Large Yellow Underwing and a Setaceous Hebrew Character playing at being
characters from an L S Lowry painting

Open

Closed

IDs of these last ones to come... Update: and thanks to CT and Dave
in Comments I can tell you this one is a Lesser Yellow Underwing

And this one is a Square-spot Rustic

Age and memory

I've just made the happy rediscovery of the fact that I've been moth-trapping for three years longer than I thought. My references in occasional posts to starting in May 2008 have been based on the fact that this blog began then. Until my Mum-in-law started leafing through boxes of her papers which have come here in our Big Move, I had forgotten the previous era of paper, printed photographs nd scrapbooks.

Lo and behold! Here are five pages of pictures which I made for said Mum-in-law in 2005, when she was campaigning for the Post Office to run a series of moth stamps (out of touching loyalty to my hobby). This year has seen some lovely butterfly ones, so we live in hope. The correspondence which she has faithfully kept, shows that Royal Mail have the idea on file.

I composed some sheets of pictures of my own moths that year, which I am fairly sure was my genuine debut with Mr and Mrs Robinson's famous lamp, one of the many excellent birthday presents I have received over the years from Penny. Somewhere in all our own, as yet unpacked Big Move papers, is a scrapbook in which I pasted such records. I shall now hunt for it with renewed vigour.

The range of the moths surprised and pleased me and I will check them out against recent comparisons I made here between the catches in Leeds and Oxfordshire. But for now, I will take up our morning tea which we will sip in bed, contemplating the persistent rain outdoors.

Golden dollars

These curious things caught my eye on on this brilliantly sunny but cold - almost frosty - morning and for a moment I couldn't think what they were. Some exciting new tiny beetle? Or vast moth eggs? It took a closer look to recognise the seeds of Honesty gleaming like gold as they nest in half of their 'silver dollar' pod. More of my regular material for sermons there.

Soon they were joined on the lichen-covered Oxfordshire stone wall by this sleepyhead: a Flounced Rustic looking like a Glastonbury festivalgoer curled up in his or her travelling rug brought back from gap year adventures abroad. Here it is again, this time as a contemplative member of the Jedi Council in Star Wars.

Aren't I the metaphor man this morning..?   To bring me back to earth, 94-year-old Mum-in-law came zooming back yesterday evening to our cosy sesh with the last night of the Proms - excellent American conductor Marin Alsop amazingly the first woman to do the job since they started in 1895. I dedicate my Honesty gold to her. "There's an interesting moth in the loo," said Mum-in-law who is opne of my top moth spies, along with P. Here it is, with previously un-noticed flecks of red paint from our recent amateur but dramatic redecoration. Another Rustic of some kind?  I shall to the books.

Sleepyheads

In the general rush yesterday morning, with the murky weather, poor light and visitors due, I had only time for a rather rushed look at the trap which I then bundled back into the safety of the shed. This is secure against hungry birds but has enough holes and cracks for any restless moth to flit through if so inclined.  I've not done this before, on the assumption that most of the moths will wake up and take their leave during the day. Surprise, surprise: when I finally had the chance to return to the eggboxes at 7.15pm - after The Archers on Radio 4 - at least 200 moths were still there, and still sound asleep.

The light was starting to fade again, but I got a slightly better picture - at the head of this post - of the Dark Marbled Carpet featured yesterday, and a series of other characters which had escaped my hasty scanning in the morning. Here they are, smallish, sober-hued and not my favourite types of moth when it comes to ID...

Brown-spot Pinion

Heart and Dart

Common or Lesser Common Rustic - check genitalia to differentiate, if keen
Update: but no need because Richard in Comments corrects me and this 
is a Cabbage Moth, new for me here

Teeny. One of the Pyralis micros? (he speculated vaguely) Update: nope, 
Expert Dave in Comments IDs it with ace precision as a Nettle-tap 
- Anthophila facriciana. MANY thanks.

Um... Update: CT in Comments suggests a Square-spot Rustic 
and I think she is right

Common Quaker Update: No, thanks v much to Richard in Comments for spotting
another new one for me: Vine's Rustic

Er...

It was chilly by the time I'd finished, so I thought I'd give the moths - and myself - a break and let darkness rule in the Wainwright garden.  The lamp will be lit again this evening, provided that the rain stays away.

Carpet beating

I've just been Hoovering ahead of visitors so it's appropriate to feature this moth from a trapful which was busy but hard to handle this morning, with drizzle and poor light for photographs. It's a striking member of the Carpet family, bigger and more boldly-patterned than most of its relatives. You can perhaps see the reason for the generic name - the rich colours and composition reminded 18th century entomologists of newly-fashionable Oriental carpets. This one is the Dark Marbled Carpet.

Same moth - different background

It makes an early autumn trio with yesterday's Common Marbled whose picture I repeat below, and the mystery relative shown two days ago, which I'll chance my arm and identify as a Spruce Carpet  - bottom picture.  Update: Well, brave try, but as the sagacious Ben points out in Comments, it is what he calls 'the confusing sort of Common Marbled Carpet - for you anyway'. Indeed.

I hope I've got the first and last right (the russet-blotched version of the Common Marbled being a no-brainer. Regular readers will know that the chances of this are about even. Update: as above...

Handle with care

This morning brought a persuasive reason for treating the eggboxes cautiously during the morning inspection which can find me a bit dozy as the nights lengthen: my first Oxfordshire hornet which was just waking up on the underside of the little cones. We ignored one another and it flew off while I was still examining its moth companions on a crisp and nippy start to a day which is forecast to get very warm.

The arrivals continue to herald the approach of autumn. In the second picture, the Centre-barred Sallow in the foreground is already showing signs of a hard life lived to the full, compared to the fresher example on the cone behind. Today's third moth is a welcome relief from my bafflement at the variations in Carpet moth colouring. This is the russet-blotched version of the Common Marbled Carpet, a seasonal friend to all who are challenged over moth IDs.

Its grey companion below is another matter, and I will have to spend time later on deciding whether it is a Flounced Rustic or some other member of that challenging tribe.

Taking the palm

Lying on the floor of our shed yesterday, this immaculate Small Tortoiseshell was either very sound asleep or dead. But if the latter, which seemed the likelier because of its total lack of reaction when gently lifted, then dead of what? There were no marks on its body or wings, no sign of a spider or web, in fact no suspicious circumstances at all.

Whatever the answer, its inertia gave me the chance of a close look at the ravishing colouring, made up of tiny scales which you can see in parts of the picture above. Being able to get so close meant that each little blue 'tile' shows up like a chip of mosaic - - and all are carefully hung to work tricks with the refraction and reflection of lights. 

You can see the godspel-writers point about lilies. Solomon in all his glory would have been hard put to out-dazzle a Small Tortoiseshell.

The underwing is designed more with camouflage in mind but still has a lovely complexity with the Greek sea-blue of the top wings converted to a darker, subtle tone.  This is one of the commonest butterflies in the UK and one of the most beautiful. Excellent material for a sermon, if any ministers, vicars or priests are taking a peep.

Snouts in the trap

I put the trap under some bushes for the first time last night and as a result, spent almost as much time searching their leaves for sleeping moths - such as the Willow Beauty above - as on those actually in the bowl.

One result, which puts me off repeating the experiment, was that a couple of the more delicate arrivals flew into a different and lethal trap: the web in the second picture spun by an opportunistic local spider which had the arclight of my moth lamp to work by.

By far the most numerous of the 150-odd moths in the eggboxes were Snouts like the one shown here, the Pinocchios and Cyrano de Bergeracs of the moth world. Otherwise there was a routine assembly of the small, brown and Martin-muddling school of moths, relieved by this lovely Frosted Orange below and a Carpety moth which, predictably, I am still trying to identify - the darkest form of the Common Marbled maybe? Or a late July Highflyer?

A slice of baking history

The weather forecast is good for the next week so here's a celebratory picture of our solitary sunflower, a real 'tournesol' as the French say, which tracks the sun by nodding its head through a rough semi-circle as the day goes by.

Its bees have their counterpart in the wasps which join us for meals outside, some of them for the last time thanks to Penny's simple but effective trap. Shown here, this consists of a small bottle, a hole in the lid and some old myrtleberry jam from a French holiday. It works extremely well and is terminal, unlike the moth one. I am a little sorry about this because I have some admiration for wasps and generally find that if you leave them alone, they do the same to you. But this rules breaks down in al fresco eating in the UK at this time of the year, as Banished observed in a Comment from West Virginia on last Wednesday's post.

As for me, my mind has been off the moth ball for a while as I hinted yesterday. The reason is the Men Only Baking Class at Kidlington Flower Show for which you had to make a chocolate Battenburg cake. A gang of us entered and produced a dramatic range of products, including an elegant version with end-twists of marzipan like a Harrods cracker and, at the other end of the scale, a 'Batteredburg' whose admirably home-made marzipan - not required by the rules - was uncontrollably slippery.

In my view, our very nice next-door neighbour made the neatest and deserved to win, but he came second and look who got the firs prize...   Now we've got to eat it and we can't push it off on anyone else, because they've all got one too.

Brainbox

A markedly colder night meant a less busy trap with only about 60 moths in place of yesterday's scarlet bonanaza. That is not to decry the quieter beauty of some of our overnighters, and even the commonplace species have the power to make you pause and reconsider their charms.

The brainy-looking character at the top, for example, is only a Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing of the creamy type, but his or her bulging forehead is a feature of some magnificence. The Angle Shades, below, also never fails to impress with its jetplane outline. Seen from the side, it combines this rakish trim with the haircut of a singer from the Eddie Cochran era (his death in Chippenham was one of the biggest stories my old paper the Bath & Wilts Evening Chronicle ever had to cover).

For the rest, I always like the Rosy Rustic, and each of the others below deserves a click on the pic and a closer look. But I've got rather a busy day which I'll discuss in more detail tomorrow, so for now I'm just putting up the photos and ID-ing later. Unless some kind soul beats me to it in Comments... Update: and Ben has. They are a Small Square-spot and three Flounced Rustics (with slight but interesting colour variations which are not just the result of different camera angles and light). Many thanks as ever, B.

And lastly a Large Yellow Underwing, a species whose vast numbers in Leeds used to drive me to distraction. Nationally, there have been a lot of reports of the species doing much less well than usual, but the trap gets a steady presence here. Quite enough for me, anyway.