Our new wildlife spotter

I've been out a couple of times recently but the birds have been few and far between. A whole day was spent with Dave Simms not seeing wood warblers, honey buzzards and goshawks. I did manage to catch up with an elusive spotted flycatcher in Sandon churchyard and a few grey partridge near there but otherwise nothing of note. Seeing these house martins collecting mud for their nests was nice albeit they're very late this year.

Most of the interest therefore has been of the smaller kind, with my moth trap being left out quite a few nights. I've had a good selection of wee beasties in it but the highlights were not from the trap. Both came courtesy of our cat Primrose. First of all we saw her sniffing at a beetle on our terrace. Closer inspection showed it to be a lesser stag beetle, one we've not had in the garden before. These are actually photos of the same species seen the same day but at Maple Lodge reserve. The one in our garden was still proving of interest to Primrose so I put it out of harms way. They can give you a nip with those pincers by the way, but I don't think they are lethal!!!!

The following day we were sitting at the bottom of the lawn when we saw Primrose playing with something in the grass. I had a look and you could see what looked like a large beetle scuttling about in the grass. I picked it up and it was a weird beast.

It was an inch long, very thick body with what looked like vestigial wings and boy was it fast when you put it down. It was clearly trying to get under cover so I let it hide under the arm of our garden chair.

I quickly realised that what we had was a moth or possibly a butterfly that had just emerged from its pupa and was inflating its wings. When they come out everything is folded up and they have to sit quietly whilst they effectively pump up their wings so they can fly. Before that they are helpless explaining why it wants to go and hide. The question was, what type of beast was it?
I watched it for I suppose 30 minute or so and gradually its wings unfolded.

It was clearly a moth and a large one at that. Interestingly though it first of all held its inflated wings up like a butterfly.

I got my moth book out and worked out that it was a large yellow underwing. Not a rare moth but a very striking one. Suddenly it folded its wings down and took on the typical moth shape.

It was still only 4 in the afternoon and I didn't want to leave it out in the open so I carefully transferred it to a nice patch of cover. Before it disappeared into the undergrowth it gave a flash of its underwing.

I made sure it was out of sight and left it to get itself sorted out for the night ahead. I made sure Primrose got rewarded for her spotting efforts and asked her to keep an eye open for any other nice rare moths she could find!!!