Little fingers

Normal service has been interrupted by grandchildren. It's now 7.45pm and we still haven't had time even to make our bed.

The moths have done their bit magnificently, however. Particular thanks to the three Poplar Hawks who arrived last night, perched on appreciative little fingers and then flew out of the bedroom window.

"I love moths" said grandchild number one and I'm sure she'll spread the news at the toy library, Tumble in the Jungle and her other social centres. Cloudbursts today make light operation tonight unlikely but I have a backlog to clear, so that's no bad thing.

Wooooo!

I fell into the familiar trap a couple of days ago of being over-familiar with my subject. When I greeted the Ghost Moth which arrived in the trap, I entirely forgot to explain its name.

Since it was a female, with beautiful but not especially ghostly pink and beige colouring - the sort of two-tone scheme beloved of North Korea's current regime (though salmon and teal is their runaway preference), readers may have scratched their heads.

As if in rebuke, the night before last saw a male Ghost Moth arrive in the eggboxes - shown in my first three pics. Hey Presto! The reason for the name is clear.  At least I hope it is. Watching one of these fluttering about at dusk, especially with its added features of a strange swaying flight and goaty pheremones which I mentioned in the previous post, would indeed be a spooky experience. I hope to enjoy it one day.

Just to remind me - and you. A second female also arrived in the trap

Pink stripe

The Blood-vein is a good name for today's top moth as you can see from the photo above. I've often wondered about the way that its rather distinctive patterning and colour might be used as camouflage. By chance, it was only the day before yesterday that I came up with a possible answer.

The Magnolia leaf above has an uncannily similar pink line across a whiteish background. Might the two be in any way related? The Moth Bible gives the species' foodstuffs as 'docks, common orache, common sorrel, knotgrass and probably other related plants'. Magnolia is not related and a quick flick through Google failed to produce any clear link between plant and moth. But I will search on. 

Here are two pictures, above and below, which show the same species of moth at different stages of life: freshly-emerged above, somewhat lifeworn below. If I am not mistaken (and please correct me if I am), they are Silver-ground Carpets, a familiar member of the delicate family whose name comes from 18th century entomologists' connection between their delicate pattern and carpets then arriving in the UK from the Middle and Far East.

A couple of pictures, next, of the Orange Footman which makes its home round here, even though its name makes it sound like a servant of the Dutch Royal family.

A welcome returnee, next, a fresh-looking Herald moth which must have woken only lately from hibernation. The moth, which has the distinction of appearing on the spine of the first edition of the Moth Bible, emerges in the Autumn but hibernates until May or June.

Finally, here's a trio of Cinnabars in the trap last night, all of which seemed to prefer the bulbholder to the eggboxes. The one on the right needs a bit of close looking to make it out.

Number One

As Moth Night notches up the second of its three days, it's a pleasure to welcome a distinguished arrival: number One in the Moth Bible, the very first moth in the book. I'm glad that it enjoys this position because in other ways the Ghost Moth doesn't get a very good deal.

It cannot feed, having no proboscis to suck nectar, and has unusually short antennae - those remarkable features of insects which we humans lack - as you can see from the photos. It is, in short, a 'primitive species' as the Moth Bible says. But it does also have some unusual and cheery features.

The female lays her eggs in flight, for example, like an insect bomber aircraft, while the males sometimes lay on an extraordinary show to attract a mate. The fly in pendulum-like movements over a particular spot, at the same time emitting a rather goaty smell.  Females are duly attracted. In the mothy world as well as our own, it clearly takes all sorts.

Another interesting pair of arrivals were two slightly different forms of the Burnished Brass, a notable example of UK moths with 'metallic' colouring whose shiny nature is due to both reflection and refraction from wing scales. There has been a big debate within the moth world over whether this species should be divided into two; one with the central brown band intact (a form currently known as juncta) and the other with a metallic section cutting across the band, known as form aurea).  Both mine have the metallic band but you will see that it is very much thinner in the top photo than in the second one.  It is that sort of variation within the main variation which continues to hold up the efforts of those who want to split Burnished Brasses into two species.

Can you see the little face peeping over the back of the second Burnished Brass, above?  That's a micro-moth snuggling up alongside. It's easier to see from the other side, here:

Moth Night

We are in the middle of 'Moth Night', the annual celebration of moth recorders and their contribution to science which also aims to increase public interest in the subject. It's a very good time of the year to lay on a jamboree which includes events designed to show people a moth trap in action for the first time.

For scientific reasons involving the coverage of moth numbers throughout the year, Moth Night - which is actually three successive nights, this year June 9th - 11th - sometimes falls at an unproductive season when children in particular may feel let down by sparse numbers or superficially uninteresting moths when the eggboxes are inspected. That shouldn't be the case at this time of the year, as my own recent hawk moth bonanza suggests.

No more hawks to show this morning, although there was a Lime one sleeping comfortably away in the trap. But the top three pictures show two interesting visitors: the Angle Shades and the Small Angle Shades. 

The bigger moth is particularly noteworthy with a very unusual way of tighly-folding and curving its rakish wings, as shown in the second photograph which I took from an unflattering angle, giving unusual prominence to the insect's bottom. It is one of the fines-looking of UK moths in what you might call 'aviation terms'. I feel sure that its sleek shape has influenced military aircraft design. It even has its own subdued version of RAF roundels on its wings.

The Small Angle Shades is shown in my third picture, a very smart moth with a nice touch of blue, the rarest colour to be found in UK moths, for reasons which I have yet to see explained. A close cousin of the Angle Shades, it shares the resting habit of its larger relation by pulling back and creasing its wings. 

Here's another sleek arrival, the Swallow Prominent, although it reminds me more of a racing car than a jet plane. Its fine lines are notably not shared by other members of its family who have also arrived at the same time. The Coxcomb Prominent and Pale Prominent are the equivalent in the moth world of humans unkindly described as having 'faces made for radio'. But maybe all the more interesting to look at, for that.

But to be fair, when the Pale Prominent is goaded away from its resting position, as I organised this morning, it too can reveal the shape of a pretty formidable-looking flying machine - as below:

Cats online

Data shows that cats are one of the internet's huge attractions - recent examples have been the use of moggy pictures to illustrate anti-terrorist alerts in Brussels and, currently, pictures of cats apparently expressing horror, alarm and incredulity at some of the 'facts' being hurled about in the EU referendum debate.

So maybe the small but very attractive family of cat-related moths (related purely in terms of their names) may do the same for us moth enthusiasts. I will try to mention cats at every opportunity.

One such came my way the other night with a visit from a Sallow Kitten, top pic, one of the for members of the cat-moth group. The others are the Puss Moth, a very fine creature which never came to Leeds but has visited me here, the Alder Kitten and the Poplar Kitten.

There is little obviously cat-like about them, although they do appear to be crouching when at rest, a little like a cat which has just spotted a nearby mouse or shrew. The name comes from two tufts on their strokeably woolly heads which from the front - I will have to remember to get a frontal picture next time one calls - resembles cats' ears.

From cats to magpies. Above and below are some Small Magpies, one of the UK's micro-moths which are not micro in the physical sense, but have been ruled to be by taxonomists. It is so large (for a micro) that the Moth Bible ranks it first on an illustrated page of micros which might be mistaken for macros. Its Linnaean name has recently been changed from Eurrhypara hortulata to Ananaia hortulata, however, and such things are constantly under review in the scientific world, so maybe it will one day earn macro status.

Here are a couple of pictures of another large micro, the Garden Pebble, or Evergestis forficalis, which is easily big enough to deserve the macro status given to the two moths which follow it, below: the Grass Rivulet and the Straw Dot.

And, while in this delicate and small-scale part of the moth world, here is a dainty foursome, all small but all macro moths: a Clouded Border with a tiny pal, a Clouded Silver (lovely moth), a Common Wave and a White-pinion Spotted (apologies for the poor picture of the last, with the reflective black tub throwing my camera and myself into confusion).

And finally, since we are in a black-and-white world, here are a couple of Peppered Moths which have called in the last week, no doubt to celebrate the huge and very welcome surge of publicity about genetic discoveries relating to the species' famous changes between standard and dark, melanic versions. See for example this piece here.

I'm not 100 percent sure about the other moth, but think it is a Poplar Grey

Whopper

Bang on cue, the biggest moth I can normally expect in the trap arrived yesterday - a day after I put a little poster on our village noticeboard telling people that six hawk moths were locally on the wing.

I mentioned that we should soon see the arrival of the Privet Hawk moth, and here he (or she) is; a beautiful creature which was accompanied by an Eyed and an Elephant Hawk as well as many smaller brethren.

It was blissful weather yesterday and I went for a wander round the well-tree-ed edge of a nearby field, hoping to see the first (and rather late) orchids of the year and perhaps some Common Blue and Marbled White butterflies, to join the Brimstones, Orange Tips,  Holly Blues, Small and Large Whites and Speckled Woods which have all been around for  while.  No orchids and no Marbled Whites, but I saw one blue on the wing and stalked this pretty Cinnabar for several minutes.

Cinnabars are amazing little blotches of red in flight, whirring the lurid petticoats which they normally keep hidden beneath those handsome and rather military uniform-like forewings. Catching one of them in the air prompted me to take some more pictures of butterflies on the wing; a somewhat unrewarding past-time for someone with my limited photographic skills, but the courting Speckled Woods have come out reasonably.

Okey-doke

Today's moth from my current abundant store appears to be an advertising for OK magazine. That's how its distinctive marking reads to me, at least on its right forewing.

It's actually known as the Figure-of-Eighty, which makes sense if you look at its left forewing instead.

The markings are a particular distinct form of the kidney-shaped pattern familiar in many UK moths, sometimes prominent, mostly less so. With this species, the figures are always clear and rather beautifully drawn. There is also a Figure-of-Eight moth, a burlier fellow with cruder numbering, but it flies only in the Autumn.

One of these days, I may get the darker type of the Figure-of-Eighty, known as form fusca and first recorded in the 1940s. It is believed to be an immigrant from the Continent, a phenomenon as frequent in the moth world as in the current human one. Like most human migrants, these arrivals in the UK prosper here. By chance, another one of them came to see me at the weekend: the Dark Swordgrass preparing for take-off below. It has been hugely successful, reaching as far north as the Shetland Isles.This moth is usually sound asleep with its wings tightly-folded, so it's refreshing to see it full-on.

Update: I've just been out to examine today's eggboxes and can't resist adding the year's sixth hawk moth, which arrived last night: the beautiful pink and greenish Elephant Hawk. Was some entomological drinking fest responsible for its name, with pink elephants cavorting round the scientists' minds? No, like the related Small Elephant Hawk, its grey-coloured mature caterpillar resembles an elephant's trunk.