Big brother

I was going to reflect on refraction (and reflection) in wing scales today via the medium of the Burnished Brass moth but that will have to wait until tomorrow, because once again I am in a state of great excitement.

Safely back in the shed (with plenty of windows open if it wants to go). See below

Behold! The biggest moth ever to visit my trap: a magnificent Privet Hawk which sheltered carefully under three eggboxes in a heap from some early morning rain. It will remain my biggest arrival unless extraordinary good fortune brings me a Convolvulus, a Death's Head Hawk or some exotic creature on the run from Blenheim Palace butterfly house.

I'd reckon 4ins at full stretch

Fellow followers of Arthur Koestler's interest in coincidence will note, if they refer a dozen or so posts back, that this is the very same species of moth as that shown in the photograph which my kindly neighbours dug out from when they found a Privet Hawkmoth on a windowsill some ten years ago. I admired their careful use of a ruler for scale and Lo! I have duly learned and done the same.

Next door's Privet Hawk, ten years ago

The moth, with its strangely sleek, otter-like black head, was sleeping in the wings-sheathed position, but a little gentle pushing of the wings persuaded it to open up to a good, photographable extent. I didn't want it to get too lively - and it started flexing its wings and generally doing the moth equivalent of 'chocks away' in an RAF film - because I want to show it to the neighbours after breakfast. So it's currently, I hope, in our shed in its eggbox, back in the Land of Nod.

I took a few more pics to give a sense of its size, although the top one wrongly suggests that a Poplar Hawk which also flew in last night is bigger. That's because of its very obliging, photogenic way of resting with its great grey wings open.  Check out the tiny micro in the last pic for comparison, too (and admire my continuing use of Penny's ruler).

You put your right foot out...  Dancing lessons with a Common Swift

Even the antenna is longer than a Common Swift. Penny points out the cartoony 'cross eyebrows' which may play a role as defensive camouflage, as in the Eyed Hawkmoth which visited last week

If moths could speak, this one would be saying: "Small is beautiful, remember"

Final points on this splendid beast. It can overwinter twice, once as a pupa and once as an adult, and that is very long-lived for a moth. And it is an argument for retaining those otherwise rather dull privet hedges which are a landmark of suburban Britain. Just imagine if there was a Leylandii Hawkmoth...

Teddy boy

Say 'Hello!' to the Teddy Boy of the UK moth world - the Coxcomb Prominent with its one-off hairstyle. Like the quiff, eh? I remember quiffs, wetting my fringe at the age of about ten and rolling it back with a comb.

About that time, I shot an arrow in the air from my home-made bow and watched it so assiduously that it hit my eye, like Harold at Hastings though happily I was only bruised. I did have to go to hospital, though, where the boy in the next bed was an Elvis Presley fan while I was a partisan of Tommy Steele. Quiffs were central to that argument too.

Here he or she is from above, with the lamp that attracted him or her behind

In the moth world, such features are all effective as camouflage; I guess the Coxcomb Prominent looks like some sort of leaf or scrap of bark. It brings to six the number of members of the Prominent family who have come calling this season. The one I'd most like to encounter is the lovely and rare White Prominent but it has almost unicorn status. Fewer than ten have been found since it was first discovered in Killarney, Ireland, in 1859.

The Coxcomb's companions in the trap were many and varied, including the seven Elephant Hawks featured yesterday, Peppered moths, Buff Tips, lots of Carpets and this little Lime-speck Pug, above, another moth which benefits from  'bird-dropping' camouflage.  Plus the two Hawthorn Shield bugs below who were having a lovely time. I felt like a bit of a stalker but shield bugs appear to be a romantic species; when I Googled to discover their identity, I noticed that the Royal Horticultural Society's page on the related Green Shield bug (remember Green Shield stamps, older folk?), showed a pair of them hard at it as well.

Seven at one go

Five of the visitors. The other two took off while I fumbled about

The valiant little tailor in the fairy tale slew seven flies with one blow. I have now got seven Elephant Hawkmoths at one go, plus a tattered but still airworthy Poplar Hawk keeping them company in the eggbox.

This is more than double any tally I had in the trap in Leeds and takes me back to the early 1960s when my interest in wildlife was hugely encouraged by a marvellous mentor, John Armitage, who was curator of natural history at the city museum.

He had an unlimited sense of wonder at the natural world and infinite curiosity about it which he passed on to readers of his 'Hunting with a Camera' column in northern editions of the Daily Mirror. His empathy with children - his wife Mabel was one of our primary teachers and she had it too - was another virtue, and also handy in a practical way; he used us as collectors for the museum. One notable example was when he discovered that we were going on holiday near Tenby, the last foothold of a rare snail which had so far eluded him. We swam and sunbathed but also returned with a bag full of the snails. Five years ago when the museum collection was in storage and I  was writing a piece for the Guardian about it, I met them again, neatly labelled in collecting boxes.

One final note on John: he was an excellent artist and in retirement enjoyed 'forging' postage stamps - reproducing them with meticulous accuracy on envelopes and then posting these to himself and Mabel. They always got through.

This one was still sleepy enough to let me show the underwing. moths are coy about displaying these when at rest

John encouraged my brother and me to search the lower leaves of Rosebay Willowherb on the Leeds ring road in Adel for Elephant Hawk caterpillars in August - a risky suggestion because children can be greatly disappointed by failure, but he knew his subject. We found half-a-dozen, reared them and hatched the stunning moths. Even that haul, however, didn't match last night's.

Initially green, the mature grey colour and shape of the caterpillar explain the Elephant Hawk's name (though alcoholic references to pink eleephants might also apply to the adult)

By coincidence, the grandchildren of our Privet Hawkmoth neighbour (see three posts back) had a similar experience some years ago which their Mum recounted to me in a post-Privet email earlier this week. Their mentor, Dawn, got them to photograph this Elephant Hawk cattie which they found in similar circumstances. Note that, like their Grandad but unlike sloppy me, they and Dawn also used a helpful ruler.

The trap was full of other riches which I will describe later. For now, we're getting ready to welcome my 94-year-old mum-in-law who's coming to live with us. Will she too become a moths enthusiast..?

Worth a silver spoon

Bees have been the subject of concern for quite a while, but we have plenty here if you are looking for some. A gentle humming intrigued me while I was busy with my new ploy of growing radishes yesterday. It came from this.

It's a bee swarm which grew in the next few hours into a larger triangle, while I Googled for information and discovered the network of 'swarm collectors' via the excellent website of the British Beekeeping Association. (Sorry, that seems to be down at the moment (8am in the UK), but it was working yesterday so should be OK soon). This also informed me that Solitary Bees don't swarm, not suprisingly. I've always been attracted by the Solitary Bee which sounds like Kipling's The Cat That Walked By Himself from the Just-so Stories. Wikipedia chipped in too, with an ancient adage:

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay;

A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon;

A swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly.

So we've got the right month. 

The moth trap is dark at the moment because we have an auntie staying and the glow might keep her awake; but the rest of the natural world has more than made up for this. Apart from the bees, we discovered this delicate little slow worm while digging a flowerbed.

In its honour, and also to mark the Auntie Visit, we have hoisted one of my favourite flags: the American revolutionaries' rattlesnake with its sensible health and safety advice.

We were also visited by a cardinal beetle, below, and this toad, at the bottom, which looks a bit underfed, although the garden is full of toad diet such as grubs, worms and slugs. Anything which eats slugs also has my warm approval.

Mellow yellow

A lovely moth this morning: the Buff Ermine, yellowy relative of the pristine White Ermine whose beauty attracted an approving comment below a post a couple of weeks ago. There were two in the trap, along with two White Ermines; the one above which was easy to photograph on its cheerful background of a Happy Egg box (what defines a 'happy' egg? I must ask the company some time). The other was part of this conclave in an eggbox cone below, along with a fading Green Carpet and a Bright-line Brown-eye.

Along with the Ermine came another distinctive moth. You can probably make a decent guess at its name if you look at the picture below. The Nose Moth? No. The Snout Moth? Yes. It is the Cyrano de Bergerac of the tribe, varied in colour as you can see and also larger in the first generation, which is currently on the wing. A second brood will hatch in late August, generally smaller in size.

Things are busying up now, and there were plenty of other excellent moths in the trap after a warmish night with honeysuckle drenching the garden with scent at dusk. Below are a handsome Buff Tip and a lovely Marbled Minor, a Middle-barred Minor (two pics), a Garden Carpet, a Grass Rivulet (I think) and a very handsome Beautiful Golden Y (the Beautiful is part of its name, not me gushing.

The Marbled Minor as first seen. I had to rip open one of my brand new eggboxes to get the other, better pic

Finally, the usual Bafflers. I am working on these...  A micro, a beautifully subtle, small dark moth, a lovely Carpet, a handsome grey Rustic or Shoulder-knot or some such, a Pug and A.N.Other (or is it the same as the small dark one just mentioned?) And hooray!  Ben Sale has been in touch - see Comments - and I've added his unfailing expertise in the captions. Many thanks. Ben).

Celypha lacunana

Tawny Marbled Minor? Ben thinks probably, but can only by distinguished from Rufous by intimate examination...

Is it a Broken-barred Carpet? No, a Common Marbled one (extremely varied species)

Rustic Shoulder-knot gone grey? Nope, a Large Nutmeg, a new moth for me

Grey Pug, poor thing, what a boring moth and name (though maybe it leads a fascinating life. I shall check one day)

Brown Rustic - thanks again Ben

The kindness of neighbours

When you move to a new area with a mothtrap, your heart is slightly in your mouth. Will there be somewhere to put the light without causing annoyance? How normal is it generally reckoned to take such an interest in moths?

I needn't have worried. Not only are our neighbours lovely and welcoming to humans but they show the same generosity towards moths. Two are checking their Solomon's Seal on a regular basis for a particular type of caterpillar which comes annually and which they'd like to identify. Another rang the doorbell on Saturday after reading about the effects of the weather on my eggboxes and the need to pull apart cones to photograph shy moths. She presented me with this magnificent pile of brand new ones, below. (I love photographing eggboxes; look at the delicate pink light on the top left one, like sunset or dawn).

Tesco can pay us later for the advertising (although actually I've avoided Blogger's ads system because I'm fairly sure that the robot would place ones on the blog about products for killing house moths.  That's what appears when I search for particular moth pictures on Google).

Finally, our nearest neighbours have come up with the photograph at the top, taken eight or nine years ago, of a truly magnificent moth: a Privet Hawk which perched on a windowsill when their outside light was on. I will be very pleased indeed if one decides to visit us; it is second only to the famous Death's Head Hawkmoth, and perhaps the Convolvulus Hawk, as the biggest you'll see in the UK (though you will be super-lucky if you meet any of them). Tony who took the photograph is an architect and his ruler is much approved-of by Penny and puts my pencil-measure to shame.

Sorry, finally finally, here's the last of Friday's big visitation - and, alas, the only victim of early morning rain which Mr and Mrs Robinson's simple but effective shield on the trap couldn't entirely prevent. Is it a Streamer Moth?  It was certainly streaming and, sadly, terminally wet.

Father's Day in black and white

It would be handy if there was a Father's Moth and even more so if it came to the trap to mark Our Day (a step backwards in the view of cynics, who reckon we used to have 364 – ie all of them apart from Mothering Sunday – until this one was invented in 1909 by a determined American woman called Sonora Dodd).

It's well worth following this link to the Wiki history of the day, which faced additional cynicism because its keenest supporters apart from Sonora were 'the manufacturers of traditional gifts to fathers, for example ties and tobacco pipes.' There is a moth called the Smoky Wave which might therefore fit the bill; but Penny's got more chance of spotting one in Cumbria, where it is relatively common, than I have here. (She's texted me from the summit of Pike O'Blisco where it was windy but thank Goodness not wet).

So to business. I was struck by the black and white theme of several fine moths which were in the trap with yesterday's Ghost Swift, notably the Coronet pictured twice at the top which is a new moth to me and is categorised as 'local', halfway between common and rare. I call it 'black and white' and it appears so initially, but look more closely (you can enlarge the pics by clicking on them) and you will see purples, browns and greens.

Observe the  neighbour playing hide and seek

Birds see things differently from us and though I didn't mean to blur this, maybe it gives an idea of how effective camouflage may be to different types of eye

The relationship between green and black is interesting. Penny once did research for a magazine article about Sir Henry Ripley of Bradford whose fortune was made from a black dye which did not fade into very dark viridian green as its predecessors tended to do. Was that on the mind of the Peppered Moth in the second and third pictures, which uses its famous camouflage to good effect on a greenish-grey eggbox?

Also in this company were two nippers, a delicately beautiful Small Magpie and another of the 'bird dropping brethren' which I think is the micro Cochylis antricapitana. I'll leave you, though, as I head off to smoke my pipe and try to tie my tie, with this beautiful Poplar Grey, another newcomer which mixes black and white to velvety-soft effect.

More hide and seek under way