Moth beaten?

Democracy Man suggested my last post, identifying some moths I'd found around the house with, it turned out, predictable names, implied I was getting a bit moth eaten. Actually that was the point - this whole identifying moths thing started last year when Mrs H asked if any of the moths we were finding around the house were the type that eat your clothes. So I checked. So far, they're not. These are the ones you don't want to find: firstly the case-bearing clothes moth, tinea pellionella:

and secondly the common clothes moth, tineola bisselliella:

Both are small, with a wingspan of 9-16mm and they are among the moth varieties that don't feed. All the damage is done by the caterpillars and the only purpose of the adult moths is to breed. The common clothes moth prefers scuttling to flying. Though generally associated with houses both types of moth can and do live in the "wild", sometimes being found in birds' or wasps' nests.

My first conclusion was that the attractive "butterfly-shaped" moths are a decoration rather than a problem: the ones you don't want are small and narrow, tucking their wings in at rest. The specimen I found that I was most suspicious of looked quite similar:

However I assuaged my nerves by identifying this small brown moth I found in the house as - surprise, surprise - a Brown House moth. Although superficially quite similar to the buggers above, it's quite a bit bigger, with wingspan 15 to 26mm. The caterpillars can live for up to two years (!) and they feed on detritus that accumulates behind skirting boards and other similar places. Charming - and all the skirtings only went on 3 years ago!

There have been some rather more attractive specimens, many still with predictable names. This one is called the Red Underwing:

Which might not seem appropriate until it flies:

As you can see you can't snap these guys very clearly in flight. For this reason I have identified many moths only after they have pegged it and they are decorating the floor. I let this one fly out, but this is what they look like if you can pin them down:

I know it's orange rather than red, but remember the word "orange" to describe colour only dates from the 16th century. There are also light and dark crimson underwing species.

I also found a common swift (though it wasn't very swift by the time I found it):

Mrs H found a Common Plume, which tucks it's wings away to look like a glider:

She got quite excited as she initially thought it was a stick insect. And, outside the house in the garden (though admittedly on the door of my car) I found a Garden Carpet:

Identifying moths with certainty isn't always easy. The size of some adult species can vary greatly and, while the patterns are a good guide they can vary subtly, while colours can vary a lot too. So I have been beaten by several species, including this handsome specimen, which had paler hind wings but flew too quickly to be photographed:

However, we haven't seen a moth in Wales as bright as those we saw while walking along the Ridgeway in Oxfordshire, like the Five Spot Burnet, often found on such chalk downlands. Guess how many spots it has on each wing?

We were, of course, convinced it was a butterfly until we got back home and checked our wildlife guides. These days I would refer first to my new favourite webpage, the butterfly-conservation.org page titled "identify a moth". The site also answers that old question - what's the difference between a butterfly and a moth? No, nothing to do with colour, hairiness or time of day. Indeed their expert says:

"Unfortunately, there isn’t a straightforward answer – at least not one that most people find acceptable."

noting some subtle differences before going on to say:

"The real answer to the question and the answer that people find so troubling is that there isn’t really much of a difference at all. The fact that in English at least, society has different words and, indeed, very different attitudes to them is largely a cultural concept rather than a scientific one. All moths and butterflies belong to the group Lepidoptera, which is one of the great, mega-diverse insect Orders on the planet, comprising some 165,000 species worldwide of which only c.18,000 are butterflies. A similar situation exists in Britain where we have only about 60 butterfly species but over 2,500 recorded moths. So, clearly if we want to apply a common, English name to the Order Lepidoptera ‘moths’ is much more appropriate than ‘butterflies’."

I accept my current preoccupation is very sad. But maybe sadder still the new football season started today, which may change my focus for a while. Though it may not improve my humour.....

* The photos of the moths I didn't snap, including the clothes moths, are from https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/identify-a-moth

More unsurprising names

 I've written occasionally about how the common - and sometimes proper - names for flora and fauna sometimes fairly obviously stem from their appearance. For example, sticky weed and cotton grass. We always get quite a few moths in the house summer and autumn months and recently these have included this beauty, which looks just like mother of pearl, along with its photo in Collins Complete British Wildlife:

Turns out it is, of course, known as the mother of pearl moth. It's cmmon and widespread throughout much of Britain and Ireland and is found in meadows, wasteground and overgrown hedgerows (tick for all of those nearby).

Then I found this one, which has an unusual marking like a letter "y" on each wing:

Of course, it's called the silver Y and is Britain's most common immigrant moth. I'm not sure where it migrated from but there are plenty of other immigrants around here in north Wales, including ourselves. As Collins notes, each forewing has a conspicuous unbroken metallic silver y marking (it looked more gold to me, so I checked it wasn't another species called the scarce silver Y, but it's definitely not that).

I also found this one on the floor in our dining room:

This absolutely beautiful species is called the striped twin spot carpet moth. The description is "light to dark grey with many faint cross lines, a slightly darker central cross band, with small dark central spots always present" (tick to all those). This medium sized moth prefers moorland with exposed rocks (yep, got those) but can also be found on sand dunes and open woodland (also tick). It is reasonably widespread in north and west Wales, even if I hadn't noticed one before. My only problem is that, although a lot of British moths have "carpet" in their name, it wasn't actually on the carpet.

The latter two weren't in the Collins book that I had considered a bible - after all it's got "complete" in the title. But then we've had it a while and there has been a lot of immigration. So I found a super website butterfly-conservation.org which has a page "identify a moth":

https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/identify-a-moth

Isn't retirement wonderful?

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Well, not quite as in The Beatles song, as it was 4.30am. Which, in this lightest quarter of the year isn't the dead of night, even if it feels like it to me. And, being warmer now, the window was open so I could hear him singing very clearly.

The good news this confirmed was that I can still hear the dawn chorus. Several years ago, at our last house, I had concluded that age - ok, and maybe too many gigs - had dulled my hearing to the point where I couldn't. I also remember the amusement of several younger employees in my last company who were completely bemused by the fact that I couldn't hear the "test your hearing age" app on our PA's phone. (Hi, Denise!) "What, you mean you can't hear that?!" as it was switched up through the age range from 30 in 5 year steps until it wouldn't go any further. "Very funny!" I said, since it stopped at 60 and I was already 61, though they hadn't all realised that.

At our current house we have more trees and more birds and, yes, wondrously I can still hear them. In particular we have a large fir tree a few yards from the bedroom window and, because of the slope of the ground, we are at blackbird singing height.

And he was giving it large. I say he with certainty because the tree is sparse enough for me to have spotted him - it is, of course, usually a near impossible task to spot a bird singing in a tree unless they perch right on the top - when I've been listening to him at more convivial times of day from my patio. And he's black not brown, so is definitely male. And I've listened as he does a call and reply routine with another bird in a tree not far away, I'd guess about 50 yards, but maybe further.

The blackbird's song is one of the most attractive of British birds. I've read it described as a "combination of melodic verses combined with cheeps and chirrups". I'd describe it as a varied, melodic whistle, of different length and complexity each time (hence "melodic verses"), ending with a brief chatter of shorter notes (hence "cheeps and chirrups"). The ending can, in my experience, identify the individual bird. In our last house we became familiar with an individual blackbird (that would be the case as they are highly territorial) who would sing from our chimney pot or a neighbour's. The song would sometimes end sounding convincingly like a telephone landline. Indeed, Mrs H and I were fooled several times into standing up and making for the house from our decking at this time of year, before saying "damn, it's stopped". Once we realised we soon spotted the culprit, who entertained us through about three seasons. I have read that the main blackbird singing season is March to July, corresponding with mating. And yes, they can mimic.

So I've just been reading up a bit more about blackbirds to see whether the call and reply routine was Mr and Mrs or male rivals. Until recently it seemed to be widely held that bird song was all about males competing to impress the females, who didn't sing. That has been comprehensively rebuffed - I've just watched a female blackbird singing on youtube, if not quite as exhuberantly as a male. I can't be sure but as the male and female - who are monogamous once joined - have adjacent territories, the reply tended to be shorter and the male sings from the nearby tree, I think it's probably his mate replying.

Our blackbird time shares the tree with a robin and a wood pigeon which, of course, has the most boring and repetitive song of all (though I might have got back to sleep more quickly if he had been singing at 0430!) Oh and occasionally some jackdaws, especially when they are taking refuge from their battle with the seagulls, fought out in the sky in front of our house and over the river estuary, which takes place every now and then and is a bit like T.S.Elliott's Pekes and Pollicles poem featured in Lloyd Webber's Cats, though we no longer have a Rumpuscat to sort them out. (I think he'd have drawn a line at a seagull, mind).

Anyway, if you want to hear a blackbird singing, as well as youtube you could also dig out The Beatles White Album and listen to McCartney's Blackbird. Which of course ends with a blackbird singing and very characteristically too. I'd always thought it was just a sad song, especially since Ian McDonald in his tour de force book on all (and I mean all) the Beatles' songs, Revolution In The Head, discounted the idea that it was a metaphor for the civil rights movement in the USA. But Wikipedia gives convincing quotations from Paul McCartney backing up that explanation, including a referenced transcript of a conversation with Donovan from 1968, contemporaneous with the making of the White Album. And also a disarming statement, viewed from 2018, that a "black bird" was a black woman.

Wonderful. A politically impeccable and politically incorrect song at the same time!

If any readers can enlighten me further about blackbirds (not black birds!) please do comment below.