The Anatomy of Caterpillars

If Insects Were People

As promised this week's post has a more scientific vibe than of late.

I came nose to nose with this caterpillar the other day. I know we have to love all god's creatures, but I found this guy rather unnerving. He's too green, too juicy, too ... erm ... priapic, shall we say.  Quite a challenge for an old maid like me.

No Filter Caterpillar

This week's post is going to be a simple, straight-down-the-barrel, amateur naturalist one. There will be no underlying themes, or thoughtful conclusions. Just a quick glance at a bit of seasonal nature, then that's 2015's blog done and dusted, and we can relax back to watching Christmas TV and eating mince pies.

This is a caterpillar. A very luminous caterpillar. No filters were applied.

The Moths Are Coming!

The above gleeful tweet popped up on my Twitter feed - chance of migrant moths on Thursday night in the South East. Presumably this will be due to a warm front (hurrah) coming up from Africa and Spain sweeping moths along with it.

On 30th May they posted this:

I think it's lovely that there are people eagerly waiting for a wave of tiny papery moths to flutter over from far flung exotic lands. There is a romance about it. Particularly as to be a lepidopterist you have to sneak around at night setting traps of light. There is a poem in there somewhere.

As I understand it millions of moths appear in the UK each year, mostly in the autumn. We are at the edge of their climatic limit, in that during cold years fewer arrive, but it seems their appearances are increasing which may be proof of global warming (or global weirding). They don't necessarily come here to breed as migratory birds do. They may lay eggs but survival of our cold, wet winters is unlikely. Having said that some colonies are surviving such as the Clifden Nonpareil moth in Dorset.

To watch the migration wave as it happens you can follow this Twitter account @MigrantMothUK, or look at the flight arrivals page of Atropos, a UK journal for butterfly, moth and dragonfly enthusiasts. Being a dragonfly specialist sounds even more romantic than moths. Think of the jewel colours and the sun glinting on crystal clear water. Dreamy.

Back to the moths. The Bordered Straw moth is quite commonly caught.

 

The paler versions are thought to come all the way from the Sahara.

 

The Silver Y is another new arrival.

 



I am getting slightly anxious at the low numbers of any insect in Garden65 this year. I haven't been out setting traps or doing anything scientific but I'm getting the impression there are fewer bees and hoverflies. Even the pond skimmers look lonely. Hopefully there is a natural cause like a wet spring, rather than a woman-made reason like not growing enough insect friendly plants. Either way it is reassuring to know natural cycles on a continental scale are still providing excitement to dedicated lepidopterists.

Resurrection?

Hello

Just as in the last post - in autumn - I'm popping in today because Nature is roaring about in Garden65 and it's hard to ignore.  Things are happening. Things that need naming, or pointing a finger at, or apologising for.

I'm also at a loose end. Well, my whole life is now a Loose End, what with the children shaping their manifest destinies, and paid work eluding me. An all encompassing hobby must be the means to tie that loose end, and this dear old blog may be just that hobby. 

I get the impression blogs are becoming a bit naff in the digital universe. People are using more immediate platforms such as Instagram or such horrors as Snapchat to shout their defiance into the existential void.  Although I surf the wave of fashion and am a convert to Instagram, I think the discipline of finding topics to write about, and indeed making the effort to compose something coherent, may be a good way of keeping my head above the water, and the alzheimic fog away.

If Garden65 is to be resurrected, and there's no promise that it will, I may look at wider topics that I did before. For example, I'm currently naturally dyeing on an industrial scale, so a few pictures of that process will fit here nicely. What I'm daunted by however, is research into the current dire state of the natural world. It is so sad. The broader picture is one of decline. One of the reasons I stopped blogging was that the constant stream of sad news was hard to bear. This time I shall try to look for more uplifting news.


So, just to get back into the groove, today's post is of the old fashioned variety - a closer look at tiny moth that chose to expire on a window sill.

It turns out she is a Mint Moth. A day flying moth. Although an increasingly common moth (see?! positive news) I'm rather flattered she chose to visit Garden65 because she lays her eggs on plants of the mint family and I didn't realise the little scrappy patches of mint here were big enough to be of use.

Mint is a nice plant to be associated with. A fresh, healthy image is conjured up. There are however other little moths with less noble names:

• Raisin moth
• Dried Fruit Moth
• Dried Currant Moth
• Cocoa Moth
• Stored Nut Moth
• and even, a Grease Moth

Ta da! And there, dear reader(s), is Garden65 in all it's 'well, I didn't know that' glory. See you soon.

Soviet Era Mint Moth

No More Moths

The Garden Dart.  Declined by 98%

The trouble with having an interest in the natural world is that there is always bad news.

Here is some more: the charity Butterfly Conservation has issued a report on the moth population of the UK.  They studied a 40 year period from 1968 to 2007 (coincidentally a time frame we the readers and writers of this blog have lived through) and not unsurprisingly found the majority of species studied have declined, some, like the Garden Dart above, by 98%.

The causes are probably habitat loss, with perhaps light pollution and of course chemical poisoning. Chris Packham is angry: 'Ultimately, the wider countryside is becoming a desert very rapidly.'

Obviously this has a huge knock-on effect on the animals that feed on moths. Packham again: "The general public's hearts are not going to be bleeding for the Double Dart moth, but they would be bleeding for all the birds that feed on its larvae."

The Double Dart. Declined by 98%

 Strangely the numbers of continental moths has increased. Apparently the result of global warming.

The Least Carpet. Increased by 74,684% !

We're all going to hell in a handcart.

A Moth Workshop

Brimstone Moth (?)

Forty Tawny Moths and Seven Silver Ladies

In a room behind the grand Victorian facade of Manchester Museum 7 silver-haired ladies and 1 silent man examined 40 moths trapped in an Urmston garden the night before.

Elephant Hawk Moth

This Saturday I attended a workshop on moths run by the museum’s Urban Naturalist programme which is specifically for adults. So many ‘find out about’ sessions run by museums or other similar organisations are family friendly events which is handy if you have children to entertain (I’ve been one of those desperate parents) but makes for an embarrassing day if you don’t have a child to bring along as cover. You feel an idiot asking questions or handling specimens alongside sticky-fingered 8 year olds. Well, I do. So having an opportunity to be unashamedly geeky with fellow grown-ups (I believe it’s correctly termed ‘lifelong learning’) is a relief.

What struck me that afternoon, though, was the nature of the moth people. On similar outings I’ve found the participants to be a mixed bunch with a common sartorial taste in anoraks, but the moth group were predominantly female, smartly dressed, and silver haired. The only man (apart from the two genuine naturalists) was a rather uncommunicative bachelor.

I wondered what brought these women to the museum to look at moths. Of course, they could all have been bloggers on a mission to find a topic to post about, but more poetically it was as though we recognised ourselves in the moths.

We too have done our living, all our emerging and eating and pupation is over, and now we are in our papery silver years. Over-looked and fragile, was there some part of us that felt an empathy with the creatures trapped inside the plastic containers?

Magpie Moth

I don’t know why the man was there. He didn’t look at the moths and asked only a couple of obvious and forgettable questions. Perhaps he wanted to know how to pin them down, but didn’t dare ask.

Peppered Moth

On the other hand ... it may be the case that moths spend most of their lives crawling through dirt and chomping on leaves, but the weeks lived with wings are the most fecund  ;-)

What I Learnt Yesterday About Moths

Rainy Day Natter

It's such a cold and rainy day let's make a cup of tea, take a slice of cake, and have a natter.

I'm not sure why I started this blog in the first place; probably as an attempt to ward off boredom, but since its inception I find myself doing proper garden-y things (makes me think I should start a new on one the topic of ‘shiny swishy hair’, or ‘renovating an old Georgian farmhouse’).  It must be years since I sowed some seeds. It’s the sort of thing you do with the children during the long days of the six week holiday. But 3 months into Garden 65 and there is green manure sprouting outside and flower seeds erupting on the windowsill. At this rate I’ll be exhibiting in Chelsea next year. Maybe not.

I’ve also got a bee house (with no bee occupants, but there is still hope) and a mini herb garden via my friend Sally. It’s all abundance here, I tell you.





The desperate search for topics to blog about has also led me to look closer at the little things in the garden. I’m still fascinated with daisies.  Who would have thought such innocent looking flowers would produce seeds? It's quite shocking.

The insects of the garden are a new interest too. The common species like woodlice, spiders and ants have always been around but now I’m on my knees looking closely I’m discovering another world. I don’t think I’ve seen this little guy before. He’s a Varied Carpet Beetle. Unfortunately his larvae, commonly called a woolly bear, eat carpets and your favourite jumper, but we’ll let him live because he’s cute.

The identification of discoveries is fun. It usually involves intense googling and guesswork, but a couple of times I’ve used I Spot and have had amazingly quick results. A few days ago I snapped this tiny moth lying flat against the outside of the above window. He was difficult to identify because he was so indistinct, so today at 7 minutes past 3 I threw him to the lions of I Spot and within 8 minutes Douglas from Shrewsbury declared him a Green Pug. Which must be right because when I was Photoshopping my Green Pug he was going green but I thought that was the fault of my Photoshopping skills. I’m impressed.


Unfortunately Fate likes a good laugh. Now I've joined the ranks of garden bloggers one of the mainstays of the garden has caught a disease. An Amelanchier has started dropping its leaves which have suspicious black spots on them. Hopefully it’s just a bad year and whatever is causing it will not survive the winter. Us gardeners ... we have to be stoical.

So, I think that’s all the natter I’ve got for today. Who’s doing the washing up?

A Creature of the Earth

This weekend I was a woman of the soil, a veritable earth goddess (but let’s avoid ‘pig in muck’ epithets shall we?).

I’ve decided the bare earth revealed by the demise of the leylandii needs improving before it is planted up. Admittedly this is also a delaying tactic while dithering over what to do with it – but don’t tell the garden design enthusiasts, who I’m sure would know exactly what to plant, in what season and in what location.

So with the vigour of the weekend gardener I hurled manure about, wielded a fork, and turned some sods. Yes, I did do my back in, but I bear it as a badge of honour.

The trouble however with messing about in dirt is you tend to come across things you’d rather not. Luckily it’s not the spider season, and all the sensible insects have scarpered to darker reaches of the garden, but this fat chap put in an appearance. Such is the state of my horticultural ignorance I never know if insect discoveries should be squished or not. Are they going to eat my plants or the pests of the plants? After poking him with a stick I covered him up again. Whatever he is, he is part of the ecosystem.

Today, after much Googling I found out not only his name but what he is – the caterpillar of the Lesser Yellow Underwing moth, which is an owlet moth, and quite pretty. Unfortunately, he is also a ‘cutworm’, who feed on seedlings and apparently do great damage to crops. There are no crops in Garden 65 so we’ll let him live.

Strange to think next time I see him he might be bashing himself against a lightbulb; a creature of the air rather than the earth.

 

Image of Lesser Yellow Underwing Moth from UKMoths