I have just two records of Merveille du Jour from the garden - singles
c9 days apart in 2009, none before that and none since. The lack of mature
oaks within sight of the garden will not help. So, when I potted one up from
the trap last night I was well chuffed. Even more so when I found another in
the trap this morning - albeit that one was missing antennae for some reason.
What a marvellous start to the day ....
Most of the rest of the autumnal stuff that has turned up over the last few
days is brown or grey.
Beaded Chestnut
Juniper Carpet
Red-line Quaker
Satellite
Acleris sparsana
Feathered Thorn
Dark Chestnut
Green-brindled Crescent
I did get out today looking for more leaf mines, and found a good selection
along with a few mildews, rusts and galls. A lot of it sorted and ready to add
to records but still plenty to go at.
It's been a busy and strange few weeks in a lot of ways, but not least the
fact that our youngest has buggered off to Bristol and is living in Uni digs
whilst starting his degree in (literally) rocket science. We nipped down to
check he was set-up okay a couple of weeks ago, but otherwise we're adjusting
to not having him here and having a room in the house that is not being used.
Our other two still live at home, but both work and both spend as much time
out with their partners and mates as at home. It's pretty much the first time
in 26 years that we've been able to do what we like, when we like, without
having to plan around one or other of the kids. We're not used to it and
haven't really capitalised on that yet!
The garden works are done and I've got a new bigger shed to sort out, along
with some drainage that works well and a level patio. A lot of work ahead to
actually make it look presentable and get some flowering plants in, and I've
got space at the bottom of the garden for composting. I also intend to create some
sort of raised pond - something for inverts, not amphibians!
One or two of you may well have noticed that I've not really mentioned or
shared anything about my 2021 square listing. I've not consciously given up,
but since July-ish it has pretty much drifted to the point that I may as well
have done. I've struggled to maintain enthusiasm and am short on energy whilst
being busy back at work. I also got well behind with transcribing garden light
trap lists to keep up to date. Through September I've barely had time to even
think about it. Yesterday I was in work tying up a few bits before I have some
time off in the coming week. On the way home, I took a detour along the lane -
the first time I've driven along there for a few week. The verges had been
mowed and the fields harvested, so not a lot to look at. But I did nosy around
at the trees and hedges for leafmines, finding quite a few on Ulmus, Norway
Maple, Field Maple, Hawthorn, Blackthorn and bramble.
A while ago, when I was expecting to be a bit more enthused and busy in the
field, a bought a cheap LED panel off of Amazon -
this one. I figured that for around a tenner it was worth a punt to backlight
leafmines with a bit more consistency and less pfaff than anything else I've
tried over the years. Powered from USB and A4 sized it is also very light and
portable. But - I obviously didn't read the blurb or look close enough at the
images. I thought it would just be a lit screen but it has a built in eye
protection plate - essentially when it is fully lit it looks like a load of
perforations. Still perfectly good for backlighting mines, but not so great
for photographing them. So I put it back in the box and forgot about until
yesterday evening when I had a bag full of mines. I gave it a go and,
actually, I'm quite happy with the results - albeit I need to edit the images
a little more in photoshop though it really is quick and easy for me to do
that.
Here's an example - a Blackthorn leaf with
Stigmella plagicolella mines. The first image is directly off of the
camera with no editing other than being re-sized. The second is the same image
with the background screen cut out and otherwise my usual editing (light
balance, sharpen a little and crop/resize).
I found quite a few Stigmella plagicolella mines on one particular Blackthorn -
it's about the only one that is set beck enough from the road that it doesn't
get quite so heavily flailed and so it has bigger leaves. Some were still
tenanted, and one leaf in particular had many mines - at least eight, probably
more.
I was also pleased to find Stigmella aceris on both Field Maple (first
image) and Norway Maple (second and third image, alongside a
Phyllonorycter joannisi mine).
The Ulmus sp. mines were most numerous though, with many Stigmella mines -
some of which I could not work out but a few appeared a bit more distinct and
I sought a bit of confirmation on the leafminers FB group to help make my mind
up. The few tenanted mines were a bit more straightforward, with only Stigmella lemniscella
still active out of the two species I had. I also found a couple with the
distinct concentric circular start to the gallery.
Other mines were more consistent with Stigmella viscerella, showing a
winding 'gut-like' pattern to the gallery and a slightly different frass
pattern.
I found two different Phyllonorycter mines on Ulmus sp. - one a bit more
pinched than the other. Several had pupal cocoons within the mine which made
ID straightforward. The first mine has the dark stiff-looking pupal cocoon of
Phyllonorycter tristrigella, and the second is
Phyllonorycter schreberella with a neater and more delicate looking
spun cocoon
Also found on Ulmus was this Bucculatrix albedinella mine.
Other mines found were Stigmella aurella and Coptotriche marginea on bramble,
Phyllonorycter corylifoliella on hawthorn and Parornix finitimella on
Blackthorn. Given I was only looking for c45mins I though that was not a bad
effort. With some time in the week before we go away for a family break next
weekend, I'll be looking for other mines and perhaps a few galls.
The garden trap has been on for a couple of nights, so I will have a few late
autumn moths to share at some point too.
Hmm. That felt quite good getting that done and ready to post - perhaps the
post-summer doldrums are over and things are getting better.
The garden building site is progressing, but by necessity (like not walking on
freshly laid paving slabs whilst the cement sets etc) I've not been running
the light trap. Anyway, for a few days around the last weekend I wasn't here -
we were down on the Isle of Wight enjoying some superb sunshine, some cracking
bands and taking on far too much alcohol. The fact that I not only survived
but completely smashed a drunken festival weekend after my surgery and treatment was
very satisfying to say the least!
Of course the recognised acts on the main stage and in the 'Big Top' were the
standouts (including Duran Duran, Liam Gallagher, Seasick Steve, Maximo Park,
Kaiser Chiefs, Shed Seven, Supergrass, The Script, Snow Patrol, Apollo
Junction ....) but I thoroughly enjoyed a couple of much lesser known bands
that were on smaller stages. The main thing they had in common was a bit of
fiddling alongside some cracking banjo/geetar.
Pronghorn -
apparently their style is 'Cowpunk'. They seem to be a long-standing (unsigned?) band
that play a lot of small gigs and generally smaller festivals. There's not
much of their stuff on You Tube, apart from tracks from this 'Londis Calling' CD and
some rough crowd videos of them playing gigs etc. Very entertaining live, like
an unpolished and rough around the edges version of the Pogues.
Noble Jacks -
these were absolutely brilliant live, polished and tight. There's a bit more
about them than Pronghorn and more stuff on You Tube etc. Looks like they're
also busy on the gig circuit, and they're playing a small venue in Leics. in
mid November.
I then went down a You Tube wormhole and stumbled on this band of a similar ilk
....
Ferocious Dog - and they've got a gig in Leics. next week that I may well try and get to.
The garden trap had an outing on Friday night. I checked it before going to
bed, and whilst there were a good number of moths around and about there was
nothing too exciting. So come Saturday morning, certainly not at the crack of
dawn as I was late getting out of bed, I was blearily scanning around the
walls, fence and sheet and then the eggboxes around the outside of the trap. I
duly recorded everything as it came into focus, and eventually I was ready to get onto the trap contents.
A good habit I've developed over the years is this: every egg tray that I
carefully lift out gets quickly scanned on the upper surface first and
anything vaguely interesting is mentally noted. I then turn the tray and
record that side first - it just means that the moths that inevitably fly off
quickly have just about all been seen and I hopefully won't have missed anything.
So first tray out, a quick scan - nothing exciting. Turn the tray - very loud
expletives that at that time of the morning almost certainly got the attention
of neighbours ....
I could not believe it - and there was absolutely no doubting the ID despite
having never seen one. Right before me was a huge Clifden Nonpareil (I
refuse to adopt the 'Blue Underwing' tag). I just wasn't ready for it
and quickly but carefully put the tray back in the trap and the funnel back in
place, and then anxiously went in and fetched a large cardboard pot and my
phone for the camera.
I grabbed a couple of quick shots. It was clearly a bit tired to say the
least, with balding thorax and a nic in the right forewing, but I couldn't
care any less - it was absolutely fucking awesome. I really wanted to see the
electric blue hindwing band, but equally I wanted to secure the moth in the
pot. As it happened, the first gentle nudge with the pot caused it to flap
open - another quick shot (and yet more evidence of its fatigued state).
I then managed to get it - just about - into a pot. It was a tight fit to say
the least. I then closed up the trap and spent then next 20mins or so shaking
my head in disbelief and posting my quick shots on Facebook. I did get around
to emptying the trap, though there was nothing else anywhere near as exciting
(unlike another VC55 recorder the previous night who thought he'd struck gold
with a Clifden, only to then find a Beautiful Marbled in the same trap!).
Later in the day I tried to get proper camera shots, but it just didn't want
to play ball and after a couple of minutes launched into flight around the
garden like a Vulcan bomber. It wasn't quite warmed up enough though so
ditched into what is left of our lawn briefly before finally heading off never
to be seen again.
The name Clifden Nonpareil alludes to the place of the first British records
(Cliveden, in Berks) and nonpareil approximately translates in context to
'without equal' or 'beyond compare'. VC55 has started getting a decent spread
of records, and mine was the 7th so far this year. It's more than
possible that I'll see another here in the next few years, and we've had the
first larval record this year too.
More standard fare included these from the light, medium and dark ranges ....
Pale Mottled Willow
Brown-spot Pinion
Black Rustic
The garden itself is looking about as battered as the Clifden ....
Work has started at long last. The bloke doing it for us somehow managed to
get a mini digger into the garden and in no time at all managed to uproot
everything, demolish the low walls and create a massive hole to be filled with
rubble to give much needed drainage. A concrete base for our new shed is
marked out, and we'll have a much bigger patio area before raised beds go in
and a new lawn. It's going to take a while before we've got a splendid looking
space, but at the bottom end of the garden I'll be creating refuge and habitat
for inverts and a raised pond of sorts.
The garden trap over the last couple of nights has been overwhelmingly brown,
with Large and Lesser Yellow Underwings, Vine's Rustics, Setaceous Hebrew
Character and Square-spot Rustics dominating. There is a bit of colour,
including a glut of Brimstone Moths, a smattering of Green Carpets and a
couple of Dusky Thorns. Though better still were these ....
Orange Sallow - perhaps the freshest I've seen, and the first here since 2014
It's the same old for me in later summer / early autumn: all of the enthusiasm that builds up to a spring and early summer peak seems to just dissipate. There is no trigger for this as such, but
I seem to hit this every (normal) year one way or another. Part of it, I guess, is the
additional strain on my time of working whilst others are off on their break - which
usually means picking up additional work. And I generally don't get much a
break during the summer; pre-Covid, when travel was actually possible, if we
went abroad it would be later in the year anyway.
Either way, I've done nothing remotely noteworthy in the last couple of weeks or so. Even the
garden trap has been quiet. And - at long last - we
are actually going to get our garden ripped out and re-landscaped with some
drainage. But that also means no or limited garden moth trapping for a good two or three weeks
after this weekend.
I am looking forward to some live music though: a mix of things booked
pre-Covid that were rescheduled (twice) and new events.
First up, I'll be heading to Sheffield for a slightly niche gig: Heaven 17
playing tracks from the first two Human League releases, Reproduction and
Travelogue. Of course you all know that Heaven 17 were formed from the
original Human League line-up (Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were joined by
Glenn Gregory after splitting with Phil Oakey and Adrian Wright). This was
originally scheduled for March 2020, then Sep 2020 ....
A couple of weeks later, I'm off to the Isle of Wight Festival, the same one
that was meant to be June 2020, then June 2021 .... Not the strongest festival line up you'll ever see, but it's a good crack and overall I'll probably spend more time the Big Top than at the main stage.
I'll be back in Sheffield in early October for a rescheduled 808 State gig
....
Later in October, I'm off to Birmingham to see Public Service Broadcasting
....
And looking further ahead, Gary Numan is popping into Leicester in May ....
Along with the return of full attendance Premier League games, some Europa League games coming up and a family break in October, my time for all things natural is stretched. But I'm sure the enthusiasm will return, as sure as the sun rises, and autumn turns to winter turns to ....
