Recording chores

Top Moth from National Moth Night for me: an iridescent Green-brindled Crescent

Common Marbled Carpet

I have belatedly caught up with the fact that the last three nights have constituted this year's National Moth Night, a fairly recent way of harnessing amateurs' enthusiasm to get a clearer picture of the UK's growing record of species and numbers. This is an entirely excellent idea, especially in providing solid data to counter the mercurial ways of the media (in which I used to work for many years) and the resulting, exaggerated highs and lows in reports of moth gluts or suggestions that species are dying out altogether.

Another favourite: Ruby Tiger with a long-snouted caddisfly

Snout and another caddis

So I joined in on Friday night, having missed the previous evening because of a visit elsewhere. I am not a sedulous recorder and find the painstaking listing of species and numbers in the trap much more difficult than I should. Since childhood, I have preferred to concentrate on the 'treasures' in any list of facts or collection of objects. Indeed, cherry-picking the curiosities of life is probably the main reason why I decided to make my living as a journalist.

And another; the good old Burnished Brass (f.juncta)

Here by contrast are the figures from Friday's trap, which I must also remember to send to the organisers of National Moth Night - and do let me encourage you to do likewise. I will try to be more on the ball next year and flag the event up in advance.

New for the year: Autumnal Moth

Red-green Carpet

35 Setaceous Hebrew Characters 

31 Black Rustics

10 Large Yellow Underwing

8 Lunar Underwing

5 Red-line Quaker

4 Square-dot Rustic

4 Lesser Yellow Underwing

4 Sallow

3 Green-brindled Crescent

2 Autumnal Moths

2 Centre-barred Sallows

2 Beaded Chestnut

2 Straw Dot

One each of Red-green Carpet, Common Marbled Carpet, Burnished Brass form juncta, Rosy Rustic, Ruby Tiger, Snout and Silver Y.

Silver Y, a seasonal immigrant in great numbers

There were also three 'carpety' moths which I have yet to identify - probably faded Common or Dark Marbled Carpets but I wonder if one of them is a Streamer; and two 'grey-y' gents, or ladies, as my granddaughter would no doubt call them, whose ID I also need to track down. Here they are:

These are the two 'grey-y' ones. I think they are two more Lunar Underwings:

The micros consisted of the dainty Gold Triangle, Hypstopygia costalis, pictured left, and the two tortrixy types shown below, one of them very battered. I think the top one is a Dark Fruit Tree Tortrix, Pandemis heparana, and the knocked-about one a Garden Rose Tortrix, Acleris varienaga. I should be sure, as both are common and come here often, but there we go.

One up for youth

The 'phone went the other morning at 8am when I have to admit that Penny and I were still slugging in bed with our morning tea. It was our granddaughter, a noted enthusiast for moths as I have mentioned in the past, who could not contain her excitement about a new discovery.

"I am calling it Browney Whitey," she said, "because it is brown at the edges and white in the middle." Then she repeated this in a whisper, so as not to wake the moth up.

We hooked up on Facetime so that Penny and I could take a look at the cause of all the excitement (which the granddaughter was keen to tell us had been found in a pair of pants). It was difficult to make out as the 'phone jogged about, but there was something familiar about it. A few hours later, our daughter-in-law emailed the photo above and I realised what that something was: posts on the matchless Upper Thames Moths blog have reported recently about the spread of the micro Cydelima perspectalis, known in English as the Box Tree Moth or, less flatteringly, the Boxworm.

The granddaughter had beaten me to finding an example of this new arrival in the UK, a moth from the Far East - Japan, Korea and parts of India - which made its way here in imported goods in 2007 and has since flourished mightily as you can see from the post in the UTM blog by ace expert Dave Wilton, above.  Hats off to the young, say I! I hope that I will play host to a Box Tree Moth here before long.

Mind you, I have no box in my garden. If you do, this moth is very bad news indeed.It will be interesting to see how the neatily clipped hedges of hundreds of stately homes cope with the species' voracious caterpillars.

Top moth

I was all set to write an elegiac, end-of-the-season post this morning. Indeed, I was rehearsing my opening as I looked through the scantily-inhabited eggboxes: 'Things are beginning to wind down, darker days are drawing in...' etc.

But then I saw the magnificent Merveille du Jour shown in the two pictures above, nestling in a battered eggbox cone. Oh happiness! This is one of my favourite moths and it adds to its lustre by coming at the otherwise sometimes dispiriting fag-end of the year.

Marvel of the Day?  It is strictly speaking a Marvel of the Night. But who is quibbling?  Though talking of marvels of the night, Penny and I went to a brilliant light show at Blenheim Palace last night, laid on by the American artist Jenny Holzer. It was free but - like the Oxford Heritage Light Night which I featured last week - very under-advertised. Blenheim is usually awash with people and queueing cars but last night there were fewer than 100 spectators when we were there.  If you are anywhere nearby, the night-time show has a couple more evenings to run.

Back in the moth trap, I also found the Square-spot Rustic above,  interesting in that its caterpillar is as nocturnal as the adult moth, feeding by night. And - final picture - the micro Endotricha flammealis which is only locally common but was here in July as well at the end of September last year.

Petticoat hunt

I always get a kick out of a big moth choosing to spend the night in the moth trap. At this time of year, the likeliest bet is a Red Underwing such as this one; not merely large but bright and beautiful. I've given the first picture an appropriately colourful background in the form of my morning tea in a mug from the Ashmolean, showing Ucello's lovely painting The Hunt in the Forest.

Getting the Red Underwing to share its attractions isn't easy, however. You need patience to get a photograph of the vivid scarlet petticoat which gives the species its name. The moths are very reluctant to show their underwear off for any length of time; they prefer to flash it briefly as a warning to a predator. Here are my best attempts during a long sesh this morning until the sleepy creature finally achieved lift-off and soared away to the eaves of our house and a quieter roost.

The Red Underwing isn't alone in this shyness about its underwings. The Black Rustic, which is one of the commonest moths in the trap at the moment, is also very skilful at hiding its shining white pair which form such a vivid contrast to the dark forewings. Indeed, I had forgotten about this altogether until this morning a Black Rustic fell out of an eggbox and in its confusion, left a triangle of its slip showing.

For the rest, the 60 or so moths (on a very cold and quite windy night) included this vividly russet Chestnut (I think) - Update: actually, on reflection I think that the three markings on either side of the folded wings mean that it is a Beaded Chestnut - and what I am fairly sure is another form of the Common Marbled Carpet - quite different from yesterday's 'copper blotch' version.

Pretending

I was speculating idly yesterday on why many Carpet moths and a number of other species often rest with the tip of their abdomen jauntily cocked aloft. Idly, because as usual I had other things to get on with and therefore no time to do research into the question.

I have now remedied that and come up with the entry above on a discussion forum. The first part chimes with my own, unoriginal, thinking but the second is fascinating. I have dealt before with anti-bat radar counter-measures taken by some moths, notably the Yellow Underwings, but not in connection with the curling bodies. I shall follow the links and read more. There are, after all, many sounds in Nature which humans cannot hear. 

Meanwhile here is a Red-green Carpet again, this time demonstrating another unusual habit of the species: when surprised - and presumably therefore alarmed - it folds its wings butterfly-style above its back, rather than in the usual flat position shown below.

I shall search again for enlightenment but my guess is that the moth hopes to make itself less conspicuous. This happens in a fascinating way with many of the 'brown' species of butterfly, notably the Graylings, which fold their wings above their backs, slide back the forewing to make the visible area roughly half as big and then, brilliantly, angle themselves against the sun so as to cast the smallest shadow possible.  I have spent happy times on warm and sunny days both here in the UK and abroad watching this sensible behaviour. 

Lastly, another type of Carpet moth, the Common Marbles's 'copper blotch' form, was sleeping on the wall of our house near the light trap. I don't think its neat placing on the cement pointing is a matter of coincidence, another sign of how moths position themselves in ways which they think and presumably hope make them harder for predators to see.

A dab of bright colour

The year is turning and the changing colour of trees' leaves mark the progress of Autumn. But there are still plenty of moths about and plenty of colour among them too. Above and directly below are two Red-green Carpets, each with its own version of the mixture of red and green which the name suggests. The more reddish one below is consorting with that Puritan-looking moth, the Autumnal Rustic.

Like many Carpet moths, this species has the habit of sticking its tail in the air saucily when at rest - see below. Whether this is for comfort or - more likely - connected in some way with moths' great mission in life which is to mate, I am uncertain.

Sallow moths continue to brighten up the trap too, and here are examples of two of the several forms of the straightforward Sallow: the plain version and the one which looks more like a well-cooked Welsh Rarebit.

My last moth, for contrast albeit still very much in the same part of the colour spectrum, is a different species, the Pink-barred Sallow. Welcome all!

Swallowing

All too often the comparatively large and delicate Swallow-tailed Moth is battered and careworn by the time it appears in my trap, so today's visitor was a nice surprise. Clinging to the cone which surrounds the mercury vapour bulb - and channels moths into the trap in the manner of a lobster or crayfish pot - it was in almost pristine condition.

It showed a distinct preference for black plastic when I lifted the cone out and the moth was subjected to a battering from this morning's breezy conditions. First it flew dozily to the edge of the trap's bowl; then, when I attempted to entice it on to an eggbox for better photography, it nipped back to the cone. Finally, it agreed to spend a little time underneath an eggbox, albeit rather shadily as per my second picture, before flying away and tucking itself into a window architrave.

A quiet night otherwise, with most of the eggboxes' other guests made up of Black Rustics and Lunar Underwings, well over 50 in all. But it was nice to find among them a Frosted Orange and my favourite, a Burnished Brass (form aurea), both shown below.