Cool cat

The weather is too uncertain to trap overnight at the moment and it's also gone chilly again; so even if the lamp were lit, there might not be many moths.

Look, though: a moth has come to visit us indoors instead. Penny is the specialist at spotting these, maybe through some genetic superiority among women going back to ancient battles with the very few 'clothes moths' which damage favourite sweaters. She spotted it after the Ten o'Clock News, flitting around our sitting room.

I got the first, rather poor picture then and had a sleepy and fruitless look through my Moth Bible; but shortly afterwards the insect ventured upstairs into our bedroom. I found a nice box and gave it a bedroom of its own overnight, before photographing it outside just now.

It then consulted my micro-moth Bible and it seems to be the Large Tabby micro, Aglossa pinguinalis, although that is not strictly supposed to be flying until June. Maybe its larva pupated indoors in our new home where the temperature is more like June than it is outside. Large Tabby caterpillars also like eating cereal and we like Corn Flakes, Shreddies and Rice Krispies.

I shall seek more advice and meanwhile hope that things warm - and dry - up.

Hawking its wares

The year's first hawk moth arrives - always a good moment. As was perennially the case in Leeds, it's a Poplar Hawk, a fine and curious-looking insect with odd twin habits of resting with its fat body curled up at the end and its wings back to front, like some sort of experimental aircraft.

It formed the subject of my second post ever on the blog, back on 11 June 2008 when I published this particularly strange view of the first Poplar Hawk to come to my trap.

Debuts since then have been as follows: 2009: 31 May,  2010 : 26 May, 2011: 26 May,  and last year 2 June, which saw this unusually battered one, below, which got me speculating at the time about possible (but highly unlikely) hibernation.

I love the dab of pink on the otherwise military-looking wings of the Poplar Hawk and the way that the antennae are white on top and pink from the side.

Matching hindwings and antennae - like the woman my 94-year-old mother-in-law still remembers taking tea with her parents when she was a little girl. The visitor had a pink frock and Dilys asked her innocently: "Are your knickers pink too?", those being the days of matching sets of such things for children.

In Leeds we also had the Elephant Hawk regularly, the Lime Hawk occasionally (in both its varieties) and the Eyed Hawk just once. It will be interesting to see how Oxford compares. It has got off to the earliest start so far, and one of our nice new neighbours was telling me the other day about a very big moth they had in the house last year, which sound hawkish. So here's hoping.

Also in the trap last night were the above: a dog-eared Bright-line Brown-eye and a Chocolate Tip with unusually restrained tip colours. It was one of seven, including the more standard one pictured just above alongside a Pebble Prominent. One last thing about all these moths: we were out late last night and so were they. I didn't light the lamp until after midnight.

Here in black and white

Do you remember the Paul Simon song Cloudy? It's nostalgic for ageing hippies such as myself - and appropriate for last night's moths. Behold a Clouded Border, above, and and below, a Clouded Silver. The latter especially is a beautiful creature, with something of the Laura Ashley look which also reminds me like Cloudy of distant summery days. This one has had a bit of a battering and gone a little bald on the back of its thorax, but the patterning remains exquisite including the traces of dots on the abdomen.

Summer this year is still in abeyance but it wasn't bad last night in terms of temperature, and the trap also had these arrivals, below.  I've got to make an earlyish start today so will return to them later. I specially like the weevil/beetle and it's always a happy moment when the year's first May bug arrives and promptly falls flat on its back. I kindly righted this one.

A Clouded Drab, methinks (but wrongly; Dave Shenton corrects me in Comments for which many thanks as always. It's a Rustic Shoulder-knot. Sorry).

I go for a Small Quaker

This looks like micro Agonopterix yeatiana but that's local so I'm not sure. (Rightly so, because it's Agonopterix arenella - see Comments again from Dave and Sam Millar, much appreciated. At least I got half the name right...)

I think it's our friend the Red Twin-spot Carpet

And is this a Yellow-barred Brindle?

Um... (but Banished suggests from the USA in Comments that it's a soldier beetle, which looks right. A redcap).

Yes, we know what you are; but not your pal at the top

I hugely appreciate the comments and corrections. Very many thanks to all three.

Carpet layers

A much quieter night, although warm early on, with light rain probably deterring the moths in the small hours. Still, the stand-out catches such as my birthday's wouldn't stand out if every night brought similar riches, so mustn't grumble.

And the moths aren't bad. The Waved Umber, above, behaved more patiently than its predecessor on Friday night, staying to be photographed, and alongside it there were four pretty Carpet moths, a Common Quaker, a large beetle, an unknown sort of fly and two snails.

This Green Carpet is the first of 2013 for me, a delicate little moth with a range from Cornwall to Orkney, where according to my Moths Bible, its caterpillars are "suspected to feed on Sheep's Sorrel in damp moorland." Such detail! And such careful use of the word 'suspected'. I must look at the updated version of the book and see if suspicion has now become proven fact.

There were two of them and two of the Red Twin-spot Carpet, above, which came the other night. Both are common and they form a pleasant colour contrast.

Birthday boys

You can't hide your age in today's world of social media. If you followed my profile on Facebook etc, you'd have seen see that yesterday I was 62 and today I am 63; and this is right. Happy Birthday to me! The moths have risen to the occasion and given me great delight, first of all with this:

It's a Pebble Prominent, another species which never came to visit us in Leeds, but last night joined its relations, the Swallow Prominents.  Here are a couple of them: Lesser Swallow Prominents as opposed to the larger Swallow Prominent which came the previous night.

Also joining the party was this pretty White Ermine, cousin of the Muslin moths described in yesterday's post (and there was one of them last night too). The Nut-tree Tussock below it was a reminder of one of the first excitements of trapping here at our new home in Oxfordshire; maybe it's one of the moths which came back in early May. It certainly looks a little age-worn.

Something else I've noticed here, which didn't happen in Leeds, is the greater number of moths which don't enter the trap but roost in the grass or leaves surrounding it. Last night they included this Chocolate Tip below and also what I am fairly sure was a Waved Umber - in the other two pics. It was skittish by the time I got to the lamp, rather late after opening birthday cards, and got away before I could take a well-focused picture. The same applied to a sweet little micro, which I think may have been Ancylis badiana.

Finally, here's what I think is a Red Twin-spot Carpet, a small moth which might be overlooked on a morning which also had the riches listed above. But it is beautifully patterned in the manner of the family, whose appearance led 18th century entomologists to compare them to the Oriental carpets newly-arriving in England at the time.

Mustn't forget: a Hebrew Character and Clouded Drab completed the birthday team.

Just in time - my Bible returns

Happiness reigns! I have found my Moth Bible - indeed both of them. I have survived for a month or so on using the internet for my (admittedly haphazard) identifications, but although it is very good and the resources provided by fellow-enthusiasts are amazing, I don't think anyone can better Richard Lewington's paintings.  Paul Waring and Mark Townsend's system of classifying is also marvellous and it's just so handy to have similar moths set out on the same, or neighbouring pages.

The moths of Oxfordshire have responded in kind. They are very courteous to a new recorder, coming in modest numbers which I can handle, but offering interesting titbits as we go along. My Chief Sage and Advisor Ben Sale commented on my last post about how poor this season has been so far and that he had yet to find a Prominent in his trap.

Bingo!  They were listening, Ben, because look what came this morning. A Swallow Prominent of truly impressive size and splendour - much bigger than the Lesser SPs which were familiar to me in Leeds. Here it is again, in the classic pose (also chosen by Lewington for his painting of the species), which makes it look like some secret US weapon.

Also in the trap this morning was this pair of male Muslin moths, looking like my great-granny and her sister on their way to get their hair done at Marshall & Snelgrove in Leeds. One puzzle for which I would welcome info: Waring, Townsend and Lewington say nothing about the especially fine pair of yellow breeches on the forelegs of one of these two. And why only on that one? It's an interesting moth in many ways, the Muslin. The men fly at night and the women by day. I wonder when and how often they meet?

Finally, an example of the only moth to prompt an exclamation mark in the generally quiet text of Messrs W, T and L: the Flame Shoulder. The punctuation follows their note that this is a moth which really does have a record of flying into recorders' ears at light traps. Moths probing human ears features prominently in myth and legend, but tis actually very rare. Watch out for this chappy though.

Quiet times

Sorry for another gap; we've been back up north on various errands. It's also been wet and generally inappropriate weather for moths as last night showed. A calm, sunny evening gave way to chilly temperatures and a grass frost this morning. Hence the tally in the trap: just one, this Chocolate Tip, and he or she didn't get further than the metal bulb-holder.

Space, therefore, to pass on an entertaining note from Ray Walton - my invaluable moths advisor in Comments under the name Stokeleymort - from  a piece he wrote about the book You English Words by John Moore, which Ray found at a second-hand bookshop which had obtained it in turn from the library of Dr Neville L. Birkett of Kendal, a former GP whose insect collection is important to Cumbria and is now in Carlisle's Tullie House Museum.  Here's the entomological connection - John Moore's view of the etymology of the word 'butterfly' which I discussed in a recent post about seeing a Brimstone:

Common words as well as rare ones turn out to be etymological mysteries. You might think, perhaps, that so familiar a word as ‘butterfly” must have an obvious and well-known derivation. Far from it. There are three contradictory theories. The likeliest is that the name refers to the colour of some of the commonest and earliest English species, especially the brimstone: “the butter-coloured fly.” A rather far-fetched notion, on the other hand, attributes its name to the look and consistency of its excrement. But Dr. Johnson thought the name came from the time the butterfly’s first appearance in the spring, the season of the year when butter is first made.” That was before the introduction of swedes and turnips, annual rotations, and the winter feeding of cattle. Dr. Johnson’s idea is ingenious, though it is probably wrong. He made, and admitted, a good many mistakes - as when the horsey woman indignantly asked him why he had defined “pastern” as the knee of a horse. The doctor replied cheerfully: “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.”

The colour of butter

Tuesday night stragglers

I didn't put the trap out last night, so as not to bother moths such as yesterday's Chocolate Tips which might return again and not particularly to their advantage. I remember this almost certainly happening with a Poplar Hawk moth in Leeds which was dozing away in the eggboxes five nights in a row. I don't have any evidence that it was definitely the same insect or that it suffered harm, but I'm guessing that the disorientation involved in coming to the trap repeatedly isn't wholly a good thing. Any opinions on the subject most welcome.

I do have some moths, though, as the night before last also yielded another species new to me, the Least Dark (apols, Black - thanks to Dave in Comments) Arches shown above which does frequent Yorkshire in modest numbers but never paid us a call there. It has the Linnaean name of Nola confusali which sounds as though it means 'Don't get confused' on the lines of the Biblical 'Noli me tangere', but it doesn't. Shame, as it would be a useful memo to myself when trying to identify moths.

I nailed it, in the continuing absence of my Moth Bible in the packing cases, with the help of the really excellent Flying Tonight page of the Hampshire and Isle Of Wight moth group, to which I was led by the equally good, local Upper Thames Butterfly Conservation website, which I mentioned a couple of days ago and to whose own Moth Sightings I'm now contributing. It's marvellous, and very good for accurate record-keeping, how many enthusiasts there are in our small, nocturnal world, and how the internet has revolutionised our sharing of experience.

I seem a bit gabby this morning, so just to add the Red-green Carpet (whoops no, it's a V-Pug, many thanks again Dave) and Early Thorn above from Tuesday night plus a Daddy Long-legs, below, an insect much-loved in childhood and still fascinating. Also to say, as I forgot to do yesterday, that I was lucky to have time yesterday morning to watch one of the Chocolate Tips warm up in the bright sunshine and fly away after our photo session. As soon as it took wing, its lovely and distinctive colouring ("What a charming insect!" a friend Tweeted me) turned into the usual super-midge-like blurr which marks out flying moths from floating, soaring butterflies and is another reason why they remain the Cinderella sisters. But like Cinders, greatly worth getting to know.

Tipping in the chocolate

This most satisfactory moth arrived last night; indeed a pair of them did, all the more welcome because I have never seen the species before.  It's a Chocolate Tip which unusually inhabits the south of England and part of Scotland but not the bit in between, where we lived until last month for 26 years.

Its name ought to be lengthened to Liqueur Chocolate Tip because there's definitely a touch of Morello cherry in there, or a spot of Burgundy wine. As the later pictures show, it's been dabbling in chocolate with its head and forelegs as well as the tips of its forewings and forked tail. Or maybe Liqueur Chocolate Shrimp because it looks extremely shrimp-like in the third picture, like those Guyelian chocolate sea shapes. Also a little like the caterpillar of one of the Puss/Kitten moths.

Last night was the warmest since we arrived but the local BBC TV news - very good and genuinely local to Oxford - warned last night of heavy rain in the early morning hours. Some internal bell went off my head at 4am, when it was indeed raining although not very hard, and I crept outside, turned off the light and put the trap under shelter. I've never done this before because the rain shield which Mr and Mrs Robinson designed for their trap is very effective in terms of sheltering the expensive light bulb. But water can pool in the bottom below the egg cups and I would have been mortified if a Chocolate Tip had drowned.

This is my 700th post. Goodness! Thanks to all who have stuck with me, especially my ace correctors such as Ben, David and Ray (see previous post, and many earlier).

Powder in May

There were 15 moths in and around the trap this morning - initially, I was going to say in various disappointing shades of brown and grey.

But it pays to look more closely and the power of the micro mode on my digital camera also helps. (Sorry for yet another pause in posts, incidentally, but the said camera's charger was also buried deep in our removal boxes until yesterday evening).

Please enjoy, as a result, the delicate beauty of these Powdered Quakers (I think; the third looks a little different and, as always, I would welcome correction if needed - and indeed, see Comments. Ben puts me right by identifying the first two as Small Quakers and the third as a Powdered. Thanks Ben!). They remind me, again, of the history of the Friends' Ambulance Unit in the First World War which I've just finished reading. Another nugget from it, relevant to the sort of work which goes on today in Syria and other scenes of carnage, was an account of the typhoid epidemic in Flanders at the height of the trench warfare of 1915.

Amid the terrible suffering, which included an infant survival rate around Ypres of nil after 12 months, the Belgian government with the assistance of the FAU and others managed to issue every household with chloride of lime sachets to make polluted water safe, each package accompanied by a free spooon with instructions for use in Flemish and French.  It's the kind of detail which keeps the whole, wider story fresh in your mind, and therefore very much the sort of thing I looked for in my work as a journalist.

Here, finally, is my first southern pug moth. Brindled?  I think so but will conduct further checks when fully unpacked. (No need, now. Ben has kindly confirmed that for once I am right).