Fri 13/07/2018

More moths today; I decided to ignore the first riband wave moth I saw as they are pretty common and I photograph them every year; however when I saw the second one, which was a contrasting variant, I photographed it and decided to do the first one on the way back. You’ve guessed it though – the first one had cleared off by then, so I was left with just the second variant. Never mind, it’s a nice medium-sized thing anyway. On the other common variant, the two wavy lines are filled in with grey, making quite a striking wing bar. Which I presume is the actual ‘riband’ (or r’ribbon’) in question. I might get one of those later.

This faded and sorry-looking small moth is a single-dotted wave. I hadn’t even bothered trying to look this one up because there just doesn’t seem to be enough to get hold of; I only stumbled across the identification while looking for something else on the internet – even when fresh it is not brightly marked. The bottom one has the distinctive profile that marks it out as a pug moth, but they are usually very small, only a couple of centimetres in wing span. By comparison, this one is prodigious at a good 4cm. Quite common but ‘rarely seen’ according to my book, this is the bordered pug. The body is plump, but the wings are almost as flat to the wall as if they were painted on. Below all that is the first spider to hit this page for ages, on my garden shed.