Moth Trap for my Birthday

I got a moth trap for my birthday.
(*Birthday not actually until next week but I couldn't wait to play with it)

Set it up last night for it's first use and there was much excitement this morning with my children looking through the box. Lessons learnt - perhaps 20 micro moths escaped as I lifted other moths out of the box and I soon realised that there were also quite a number of moths sitting on the ground near to where the trap had been standing so I need to be aware of this.

Identified most of the moths but some 'brown ones' and micro moths evaded easy identification so I need to get a more comprehensive guide. Terrific names and some beautiful specimens, did a few sketches in my journal and took photos before releasing them all into the bushes. Looking forward to seeing what I can find in the coming weeks in Ilkley and Norfolk.

The tally: Perhaps 40 moths in total-including:

1 Garden Tiger
1 Swallow Prominent
4 Jersey Tiger
2 Plume Moth
1 Common Rustic
1 Canary-Shouldered Thorn
1 Dusky Thorn
2 Dark Arches
2 Large Yellow Underwing
1 Setacious Hebrew Character
1 Buff Ermine


* Note: The swifts have left us for Africa.

Wonders of the Deep

Another week shrimping at Frinton-on-sea in Essex.

Early summer specimens.

Its the day before I take my family into a muddy Glastonbury Festival and I'm running about collecting marquees and putting up signage for next weeks Ashcott Beerfest. However in between all this, and work, I picked up a dead wren in the lane by the Apiary and collected two bee swarms from a friend's garden. I have rehoused the bees in a hive over the road and a new one set up in my garden. Several bees seemed reluctant to enter the hive, once I'd managed to get them out of the skep, sitting in as sleepy group outside as night fell so I picked them up and put them into the top of the hive, clearly perhaps tired and hungry so gave them a little honey. The dead buzzard I found last weekend also needed dealing with so I skinned it and prepared the carcass for preservation, as I learn taxidermy. You have to be very careful not to tear the skin around the base of the tail and I shouldn't have left it a week, lesson learnt. (* Roadkill freezer already full and a lot to deal with in the coming weeks)

Buzzard on the road.

Stopped to pick up a dead buzzard on the A39. Not the first time as they hang in family groups above the Polden ridge and collect roadkill from the tarmac, a feeding habit with predictable risks for a large, and not particularly agile, bird. This specimen seemed unharmed by the collision that ended it's life, so perfect in-fact that I began to wonder if it might not be stunned and spring back to life inside the car. The eyes covered by the pale lower eyelids, the body still warm and limp. Larger than perhaps expected and particularly so when the wings are out, beautfuly hinging as the feathered canopy opens, splayed and stiff and ready to take to the air. The body coverlet feathers astonishingly soft, the beak and claws so sharp and hard, the beautiful rosy brown barring on the feathers. I haven't got any more room in my roadkill freezer and with the examiner visiting work and the End of Year Show coming down there hasn't been any time to draw this week but I am underway preparing this buzzard for taxidermy now.

Normandy

A spring week in Normandy - a first for me, having always been in high summer. Apple blossom and flower-rich pasture in abundance. An ever present cuckoo, living up to the oldest English song, heralding summer.  A dawn chorus of epic proportions. Miles of spotted orchids clustered in the hedgerow banks all around; maybe less pesticide use, maybe just less intensive use of land?


And on the bookshelves of our gite, this old friend.

Early summer rain and hodmandods.

Raining today but really warm. Sitting at football in a T-shirt but trying to sketch an armadillo skeleton for my book plans whilst avoiding heavy raindrops. The badger set still is still enticing me, in the woods on the walk along the lane, but I have yet to see the badgers that my son saw a couple of weeks ago and I plan to stake out the set one evening next week to try to get some photographs. The wet warm weather has bought out the snails, there are gangs of them (* collective noun for snails - a 'slime' 'shell' ?) in the gardens on School hill, writhing groups all enjoying the security of the wet leaves, cloudy sky and humid air - still evolutionarily linked to the water of the distant sea from where these now earthbound molluscs once crawled. They are actually very beautiful and, even in large groups, surprisingly invisible with their mottled shells and careful considered movements. As a boy I used to collect them, no surprise there, and the smell of damp leaves or lettuce still reminds me of my buckets of snails in the shed. They frequently escaped, as did my cockroaches, and I recall the trouble caused at my father's work in hospital when they got out in his office having been bought in for me by his secretary.

Though not a cow I have horns;
Though not an ass I carry a pack-saddle;
And wherever I go I leave silver behind me.

The answer, in a curious little southern English dialect word, sadly long since defunct, is hodmandod

Cowslips and swifts in the westcountry.

Plants bursting up everywhere with the sunshine and heavy rain showers. The wonderful roadside meadows on Street Hill are covered in Cowslips, (Primula veris), and primroses (Primula vulgaris) - I hadn't previosuly realised that they were closely related. I saw the first swift on Thursday night at 7.30pm above the field where we were raising a marquee in Catcott and there suddenly are cuckoo-pints everywhere in the hedgerows.

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Wikipedia - Arum maculatum is a common woodland plant species of the Araceae family and is known by an abundance of common names including snakeshead, adder's root, arum, wild arum,arum lily, lords-and-ladies, devils and angels, cows and bulls, cuckoo-pint, Adam and Eve, bobbins, naked girls, naked boys, starch-root, wake robin, friar's cowl and jack in the pulpit. The name "lords-and-ladies" and other gender related names refer to the plant's likeness to male and female genitalia symbolising copulation.