what lurks behind the net curtains?

Ans: this one, last night. No ID (yet).

London bus type behaviour

Nothing right now would give me greater pleasure (there being no men present) than to identify the insect this first photograph. Sadly, nothing illustrated within the admittedly meagre resources at my disposal even remotely resembles it, so I humbly offer up the image unadorned and for your edification. It was there by the bathroom door last night and gone this morning.

Inside a rather different flier was disturbed by me turning on the light; so I resorted to the previous night's tactics to record the visit by what I hold to be a Swallow-tailed moth (ourapteryx sambucaria) even though The Book says it files in July.

It settled on the charger unit for the electric toothbrushes (!) which lives in front of the florescent tube on the bathroom unit. That created all sorts of difficulties when I attempted to take a photograph of the underside. Although the wings are a cream marked as seen in the first photo the body seen from underneath is much much closer to a snowy white.

Finally, this visitor, a regular, lovely burnished copper tones. Not the best picture I've taken, but also not the worst.

Saving the best till last...

This was good enough to get me posting again... enough to remind me of what got me going in the first place.

They always turn up when you're not really thinking that anything interesting might be in the offing.

I turned in late last night, after everyone else ... wandered dozily into the bathroom, turned on the light and padded about. Minutes passed before it caught my eye, sitting high up on the wall in the corner above the loo. I had to look again to be sure I wasn't imaging things.


It was so still, so perfectly formed and so vibrantly coloured I could hardly believe I wasn't looking at a leaf blown in through the skylight ... and never mind the autumnal hue.

Of course by the time I got back with the camera it had been set off by the light and was fluttering about. Usually I let things take their course but last night I closed the window and the door, turned off the main light and put on the smaller light over the basin. In a couple of moments it calmed down and I was able to take these photos. Sadly against a dark background rather than the light blue of the walls. The flash drains out some of the colour too - bear that in mind.

Probably a male Orange Moth (angerona prunaria)

Second week of June

A moderately belated post of a visitor last week I managed to capture a reasonable image of (having taken a significant step towards master of the practice of maintaining charge in the rechargeable batteries).

A moderately interesting moth too, that I may or may not have seen before but not this year...