Simple pleasures

It is a handy rule in life to find pleasure in small things, and here is an example. Ever since I started light-trapping in 2005, I have wanted to see a Magpie Moth in the eggboxes. This is a humble ambition since the moth is not uncommon; indeed, in some areas, including my schoolboy haunts, it reaches almost pest proportions, especially for those who grow currants. I have also read about it at length in the works of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, a famous surgeon and brother of Lord Keynes the economist, who was also an expert on moths.

It hasn't eluded me entirely. On just one occasion in Leeds, there was a Magpie in the trap but it fluttered away before I could heave myself and my camera into action. This proved to be an ill-advised move on the part of the moth; as it zig-zagged across the lawn, the robin which always watched me in the morning as I inspected the moths, streaked in like a Spitfire and...bye-bye, Magpie. Update: I mentioned this incident on the Upper Thames Moths blog and fellow-member Andy King made the interesting point that the Magpie's striking colouring is in part a warning to birds that it is at best distasteful to them and at worst, poisonous. Perhaps the robin learned a lesson, though if so, it wasn't a lasting one as the bird continued to try to snatch my catches when it could.

Now, at last, I have found one which consented to stay docilely and be photographed, so I can add another species to my record list. The Magpie is an extremely attractive creature with its op-art speckling enhanced by the yellow blotches. I have often thought of it when looking at the Small Magpie micro-moths which are very common here. How pleasant to be able to rest happily now, knowing that I can return whenever I like to these pictures of the real thing.

I've just had an encounter, too, with another favourite. We took our Estonian friends to Stonor Park, an ancient Catholic stronghold in an exquisitely beautiful Chiltern valley - above with classically English/Arcadian deer and cricket - and the sunshine which blessed us also attracted two Hummingbird Hawk moths to one of the garden's buddleias (which was all aflutter with butterflies - Red Admirals, Tortoiseshells and various Whites and Browns). The Hummingbird Hawks tended to keep to the high fronds and never rested for a moment, but I managed to get this one half-decent picture, below.

I was also delighted to get a close-up picture of that butterfly aristocrat the Silver-washed Fritillary. Two of these were swooping about in their magnificent, powerful style along the flower borders and one of them occasionally stopped for a rest. I was astonished to find how battered it was, like a wartime aircraft peppered with enemy fire and flak. Amazingly, this seemed to have no effect on its flying prowess.

Back at home, the eggboxes also yielded the visitors below: 

A Flounced Rustic, very elegantly patterned

Marbled Beauty

Yellow-barred Brindle (though in truth, at least in freshly emerged examples such as this one, the 'yellow' is green, a rare and very appealing colour in UK moths).

One of those weirdly-shaped characters, the Pale Prominent, looking slightly less weird as it prepares to taxi down the garden table runway

A Common Plume with its rolled-up wings

The pretty micro Anania coronata, a welcome change from the innumerable Mother of Pearls amid whom it was snoozing

An Oblique Carpet, a comparatively rare visitor here

A pretty Brimstone Moth which met our young Estonian visitor's demands for something to yellow to go with her Canary-shouldered Thorn, Leonie.

And a delicate little Single-dotted Wave, that misnamed moth of many dots, looking as though it has just chewed a Big Smile-shaped hole in the eggbox before drifting off to sleep

Eggy

Only yesterday, Alex in Comments suggested that I bridge the potentially quiet gap between late Summer and early Autumn moths by hatching and breeding caterpillars from eggs. On cue, look what one of my visitors left on the rim of the bulb-holder last night.

Who the mother is remains to be seen, provided that the eggs bring forth tiny caterpillars which I can successfully nurture. But I wonder if she might be the very attractive Orange Swift, below, which was sleeping on one of the eggboxes inside the trap.

There was very little orange about her but plenty of soft maroon and purple, so much so that I thought initially that she might be something new and unusual. Like the doughty women in Bamforth's seaside postcards, she is very much larger than her male counterpart and altogether more impressive.

Elsewhere, I found the year's first Copper or Svensson's Copper Underwing, above, a moth famed for his habit of scuttling around when disturbed but refusing to show its eponymous underwings and seldom inclined to fly off rather than try to hide. This was not the case with a Red Underwing which was resting near the trap and panicked as soon as I padded up in my dressing gown and slippers. I just managed to snap it in the grass, with a glimpse of its flashy nightie included.

On the wall nearby was one of that lovely species, the Canary-shouldered Thorn, whose vivid yellow back attracted great enthusiasm from a young guest staying with us, over from Talinn in Estonia with hyer Mum and younger brother. Noting the moth's resemblance to a lion in both furriness and colouring, she christened it Leonie and has kept it overnight in a large, leaf-filled box, along with the eggs.

She and her brother were interested in the largest arrival, the Poplar Hawk in the picture above, but not as fond of it as its smaller, brighter relative. Meanwhile, the eggboxes furnished a modest but varied range of other moths to show the kids, some of them shown below:

A Lime-speck Pug

A very sleepy Coronet

A Red Twin-spot Carpet

and a Common one

A Common or Lesser Common Rustic

And that familiar half-and-half micro which I will identify when I take the tea up to Penny and have access to the Micro-moth Bible which is currently at my bedside. Update: Alex in Comments kindly beat me to it, nailing this as the Garden Rose Tortrix, Acleris variegana. Many thanks.

Dagger yesterday, cloak today

I am not really to be trusted on the ID of moths like the one shown above whose relatively nondescript  colour and patterning defies my most earnest efforts to pin it down. But I wonder if it is a Cloaked Minor, which would be a newcomer for me albeit not an uncommon moth. It has the look of a faded specimen of one of the CM's several versions (whose variations are shared by similar moths and add to my bafflement). I shall have to put it to the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog. 

No such problems with the showy Ruby Tiger above and I am confident that the moth below is a Pale Mottled Willow, although there is a somewhat similar species appropriately called the Uncertain.

Then we have a handsome Straw Underwing seen in profile and a rather dull-coloured example of the usually purply - and hence well-named -  micro Pyrausta purpuralis.

Finally another micro which I think, after much scrutiny, of the Micro-moth Bible, to be Acrobasis consociella, another novelty for my list if so. That's a tiny plus at a time of year when the Summer moths are starting to tail off and the Autumn ones have yet to emerge.

Late to the party, plus thumbs

It looks as if the local Prominent moth population has been reading this blog. In my last post, I featured five of the tribe which came in a single morning and noted that, of my regulars, only the Pebble Prominent was missing. On cue, the one above turned up this morning.

I have shown it with my beautiful thumb which features in a number of today's pictures. Also a Mother-of-Pearl micro which I didn't even notice when taking the picture, so numerous are they in the trap these days. Here are some other Thumb moths:

a Straw Underwing

and again, from above. What a striking moth of its subdued grey/brown kind

A Grey or Dark Dagger, showing its weapons very finely

A Black Arches, altogether excellent moth

A Poplar Grey, also pleasantly patterned

A Lesser Yellow Underwing

and what I think must be a rather small Pale Mottled Willow.

Sorry about the condition of my thumbnails. I have always enjoyed biting then, not from any nervous disorder - that I know of, at least - but just as a practical way of stopping them growing without the faff of scissors or those unmanageable clipper things. I think it also keeps my teeth sharp. I would like to be able to bite my toenails but Penny is the one who does yoga, not me. (She doesn't bite any of her nails, I should hastily add).

Now, here are some nice if unspectacular non-thumb moths:

The rather neat, dark form of the Shuttle-shaped Dart, the first I've noticed this year

A Dusky Thorn on the lamp flex

and a Bloodvein, a species more common this year than I recall in the past

Last word on thumbs: I hope they make a good scale for you. Proper moth experts show rulers but I can never get camera, ruler and, crucially, moth in the same place at the same time. So I generally rely on readers have as intimiate a knowledge of UK eggboxes as I do. The thumbs are an extra.

Family get-together

I am lucky to belong to a large extended family and, from time to time, we have get-togethers to check that the older end are still OK and to meet the ever-increasing little ones. So it's good to welcome a family party of moths in the trap this morning: five members of the handsome Prominent tribe, all in one go.

At the top are the two Swallows, sleek moths with their wings held tightly back like a swallow in flight. The one on the left with the series of white darts on its wing is the Swallow Prominent and the one on the right with the single, larger dart is the Lesser Swallow Prominent.

Below them, left to right, are the Coxcomb Prominent, described here the other day, the Iron Prominent with its rusty tones, and the Pale Prominent, a ghostly looking moth like an old piece of Cadbury's chocolate flake, which also shares the perky quiff of the Coxcomb. Like me, these UK Prominents (which take their name from the tufts common to many of the adults and most caterpillars) are part of a much larger family - 3562 species worldwide. 

Of my regulars, only the Pebble Prominent was missing this morning. I have yet to get a Great, Plumed, Maple of Three-humped Prominent, while the beautiful White Prominent - see Angus Tyner's lovely pic, left, courtesy of the excellent UK Moths website - is and I fear always will be the stuff of dreams. It used to fly here but now is known only from county Kerry in Ireland where it was rediscovered in 2008. Check out this interesting link.

Other visitors this morning included a pair of Orange Swifts, above, handy for me to show the difference in size and colouring of the male (left) and the female. As someone gradually reducing my weight I admit a smidgeon of envy for these moths; they have no mouthparts and so cannot feed. The inevitable downside is that their lives are short.

Finally, behind this Common or Garden Carpet pretending to be a butterfly, you can see one of the many clustering gangs of the currently ubiquitous Mother of Pearl micro-moth. Here they are again, closer to: