There are quite a lot of variegated butterflies here sometimes during the summer, although they tend to lie low when it's a bit cold and windy as it is so far today.
Yesterday though an elderly professorial-looking bloke turned up and wandered about the back lawn for a couple of hours. I didn't speak to him but I was told he was a lepidopterist interested not in butterflies but moths. He left a moth trap at the other end of the lawn - which I didn't examine - all night, and its white glare was there when I went to bed at 2 this morning. I'm told he turned up this morning, harvested the moths he wanted, released the others and went on his way.
Herself now tells me there are 'a lot of moths' in our fridge. I haven't noticed them myself, but I can see it's the sort of place where they might expect to avoid being trapped and embarrassingly studied. Intelligent of them I can't help thinking.
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>> Yesterday though an elderly professorial-looking bloke turned up and wandered about the back lawn for
>> a couple of hours.
You seem to get a lot of varied wildlife in your neck of the woods. Have you managed to identify the exact species of professor you have attracted? Visiting, Emeritus, Honorary, or perhaps even one of the American variety - Distinguished perhaps, like my esteemed brother.
Do you put any special kind of food out for them, or are they looking for somewhere to hibernate?
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I'm just seriously impressed Lud is rich enough to have a back lawn that big!
Pat
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>> rich enough to have a back lawn that big!
I'm not rich Pat. Just very fortunate.
CP: we have a Professor Feeder under an apple tree. We bait it with all sorts of nonsense, the more outlandish the better. Sometimes we get a glut of French philosophers and have to cull a few.
Their droppings make a frightful mess, but with nature you have to take the rough with the smooth, as Pat can explain.
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You are rich in your way of thinking,I don't really know what that means.>:)
I put some little wooden boxes with holes in it against the fence.Bees have layed eggs in it so my son in law told me and sealed the entrance.
Next year they should fly out the bees I mean.Iam getting into nature in my old age.
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>> Herself now tells me there are 'a lot of moths' in our fridge. I haven't noticed them myself,
As so often, I have misunderstood. The moths didn't flee to the fridge to avoid the lepidopterist. The lepidopterist took them out of the trap, placed each specimen in a small plastic food container and then put a plastic bag full of those in the fridge. It's still there. Apparently they go into a sort of hibernation in the cold but come back to life when warmed. Anyway I think that's what happens.
They are small, glamour-free brown moths that all look very similar to me. No doubt the lepidopterist knows how fascinating they are once you get to know them and will be back for them soon.
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AC, I would just love to have a wander round that huge lawn of yours with you one dark night.
I can see it now....both with a glass in one hand, a ciggy in the other and I'd like to bet we'd both have some tales to tell.
We'd certainly put the world to rights before dawn:)
Pat
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I'd love that Pat. I hope it happens.
I was wrong about the moths again. Apparently they've been tabulated already early this morning, but they ought to be let out after dark. My smallest grandchild has bagged the task of letting them out.
It's my birthday today so I'm just finishing an early large tasty Maria Sanglante. Nevertheless I will still be legal and safe to drive and will collect a nephew and granddaughter from a station nearby in less than an hour. Of course later will be another matter. And stuff is apparently planned for tomorrow when wage-slaves aren't under the lash.
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Many happy returns ! Well, a few anyway, bit insensitive saying 'many' I suppose to a gentleman of your advancing...
Oh look never mind !
Happy Birthday !
;-)
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Thanks Humph.
The nippers just rushed in with the plastic bag of moths and asked if I wanted to watch them being released. I said no thank you darlings, and poured another with orange juice.
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>> AC, I would just love to have a wander round that huge lawn of yours
>> with you one dark night.
>>
>> I can see it now....both with a glass in one hand, a ciggy in the
>> other and I'd like to bet we'd both have some tales to tell.
>>
You might wander for hours and never bump into each other.
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30 yards by 30. You'd need to be severely handicapped to get lost in that. Tsk!
This is a nice place and we are lucky. But it's collectively owned. Not a jot of it belongs to me.
The restricted usufruct does me fine.
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...a lepidopterist interested not in butterflies but moths.
An arbitrary and artificial distinction anyway. French doesn't make it, and most of the stuff we (I, anyway) were told at primary school - knobby antennae on one, feathery on the other - is just BLX.
Lepidopterists always struck me as rather shallow, attracted by their subjects' pretty wings rather than their essential insectiness. The daft, twee common names of butterflies confirm my prejudice. Wasps (saw an amazing hunty one yesterday dragging a caterpillar into its burrow) ants, bees and dragonflies are far more interesting.
I'm sure your lepidopterist is the honourable exception, AC, especially if he prefers the anonymous brown ones to the big showy things. Do you get the brilliant hummingbird hawk moth in your part of Sussex?
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I have not one, but two friends who are mothologists with their own traps. I went mothing one night with them in a local meadow. A real expedition, trap, quiet Honda generator, chairs, beer. As well as the moths, the police turned up thinking (or hoping perhaps) that there must be a minor rave, or possibly some naked pagan dancing going on.
What I can't get over though is the moth identification book - page after page of identical looking buzzards, the differences if there are any seeming too small to bother about.
I did find an elephant hawk moth in our conservatory a couple of years back which I thought was astonishing, but they're quite common it seems.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deilephila_elpenor
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I hate moths...I'd rather tackle an armed gang in an off-licence. The big hairy ones ( Moths ) get me all of a doo-dah...ugh !
Opened the garage a few weeks ago when it was a hot day and heard a clattering sound above me. I bit of searching found a humungus dragonfly adging against the roof light trying to get out. I swear it was a good 4 inches long. It was too high to catch comfortably with a glass and card so I left it.
Must have come from the field at the back and found it's way in through some crack. I did photo it but it was against the Sun and didn't show up very well.
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>> I hate moths...I'd rather tackle an armed gang in an off-licence. The big hairy ones ( Moths ) get me all of a doo-dah...ugh !
Yeah, a big furry moth in your face can give you that awful feeling of fur growing inside your throat. Haven't met one of those for a while though.
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>> I hate moths
SWMBO has to get rid of them for me (I do the spiders), ever since I took a mouthful of mixed veg soup one evening when camping - one of the lumps started fluttering around inside my mouth!
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We have a moth trap and the impossible book. Three or four times a year we put it in the garden and I photo the haul the next morning.
I promise you they are interesting.
Now, did I ever tell you about Cardinal Richlieu's fourteen cats? I think I can do the names from memory...Mirabelle....Serpolet...
:)
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There must be a huge, huge interest in moths and it doesn't matter if you are new to the subject, working or even very young as it seems you can start at an early age too. Witness the abundance of magazines and websites on the subject: New Mother, Working Mother and even Mother and Baby.
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Lepidoptera - Cliff Pope
