10. The Time of the Heterocera.
It had settled on top of a cork board, the sort of
thing on which you pin postcards and lists of ‘things to do’, and your latest
computer-printed list of the direct debits that go out of your bank account
every month, and which make you wonder how on earth you cope with the rapacious
demands of building societies, the suppliers of water, gas and electricity to
your home, the Local authority Taxes, the telephone, house insurance, bank
loans, credit cards, payments to a modest pension fund, Internet access, domain
hosting and several other things! The only other thing notable about it - pronuba I mean, not the list - was the fact
that it getting slightly worn. That is, you can see a ‘bald patch’ on what I
assume to be the top of its thorax, where its plumage has got rubbed off.
Naturally, the illustrations that appear in entomological text books are of
perfect specimens. But here we have a pronuba that has been around for a while, and ‘seen life’
shall we say? Also, on consulting South’s ‘The Moths
of the
Having photographed it, I admit I forgot about it -
him. A couple of days later, following an arduous gig, I retired to bed late,
with a book and a bottle of white wine, fresh from the refrigerator. Droplets
of condensation naturally formed on the bottle. After 15 minutes or so of
reading, I was becoming drowsy, when a whirr of wings was heard, and pronuba, surely
the self-same example as pictured above, alighted on my bedside table. Greeting
the moth as an old friend, I nodded cordially to him. I don’t say he nodded
back, but what he did do was walk over to the wine bottle, prop himself up
against it with his forelegs, and with 
his proboscis, drink greedily of the water droplets
on the bottle. I watched him do so for two or three minutes, enraptured -
indeed highly privileged - that I should have the opportunity of study the ways
of Nature, while comfortably reclining in my bed, with a glass at my elbow. Of
course, what I should have done, was to get out of bed
and bring the camera to record this incident. Alas, the rich, passionate &
devoted blood of Kirby or Spence, Henry Newman or of P.B.M. Allan,
does not run in my veins! However, you will be pleased to note, that I did bestir myself enough to get out of
bed, pick up our stalwart pronuba, and
release him from the upstairs window, as a reward for his versatile
persistence. Who knows: perhaps he had not already paired after all?
The next day, I entered my workroom to find a moth
on the wallpaper. While Noctua pronuba must
be known to practically anybody, including myself, it is not to be taken that
this means I know what very many moths actually are. No; perhaps 10 or 12 at
the most. But one can always look through a reference book to try to identify a
‘new moth’. Let us try it with this one, which is of the sort that roosts with
its wings more flattened out. Alas, it does not seem to work. I have leafed through
both volumes of South and can not identify it. It is relatively large: by which
I mean it might have a wingspan of 1.5 inches, perhaps a little more. It seems
odd that it can’t be found… Once, without the aid of a camera, I remembered
sufficient of a small day-flying moth seen on the estuary at Maldon, Essex, to
later identify it as Chiasmia clathrata, the
Latticed Heath. True, that has a very distinctive pattern. But surely the moth 
opposite is distinctive also? Surely, it must be one of the ‘thorns’? Do
you know what it is? If so do please let us know!
Anyhow, to draw this erratic chapter to a close,
that same night, I found to my delight, that a large, gracefully slow-flying
moth was present in the work-room. It seemed most likely that it was ‘The Old
Lady’ Moth, Mormo maura. It
proved very difficult to photograph though. I kept it overnight in a large
plastic box, and attempted to photograph it the next morning in bright
sunshine. The excess of light was in fact an embarrassment, and it was only by
greatly tweaking the brightness & contrast that the shot seen below was
possible. After all, moths were never meant to be seen at all, let alone
photographed, in bright sunshine? This image is altogether too golden brown and
‘contrasty’. Still, I’m pretty sure it is Mormo maura, and it
makes me wonder why it is called the ‘Old Lady’? Is it
so called because its relatively sombre dark colouring has a fancied
resemblance to the conservative garb of an old lady of the seventeenth or
eighteenth century? Or is it because its flight is rather hesitant, as it dips
and wavers and ‘side-slips’ as it goes, much as a gracious - but elderly - lady
may have moved in those far-off times? (Nowadays, of course, elderly ladies
move in a much more resolute fashion, and in e.g. queues interpose themselves
without any hesitation, between you and those in front of you, not even giving
you so much as a slight deferential smile, which at least, they were formerly
wont to do.)
The origin of the scientific names of our British
Lepidoptera have been fully and reliably set out by Lt. Colonel A. Maitland Emmet, MBE, in his monumental work ‘The Scientific Names of
the British Lepidoptera, Their History and Meaning.’ (Harley
Books, 1991). But I know of no equivalent work (however much less
important it assuredly is) concerning the trivial names of many of these same
insects.
On the whole, I think that I will confine any
future casual ‘nature study’ photographs to things that can be shot in
daylight, and without any undue exertion!
Location
changed