Tue 06/08/2019

Found this nice grasshopper on the fence round the back of the factory. It was quite large and very mottled, but in the end I think it is just a common field grasshopper. Might be wrong though.

Grasshopper Common Field Chorthippus brunneus
Grasshopper Common Field Chorthippus brunneus
Grasshopper Common Field Chorthippus brunneus
Grasshopper Common Field Chorthippus brunneus

 

This attractive micro moth is one I have never seen before, and like most of my best finds, was basking on the outside back warehouse wall. It looks good from the left side, but the right side has sustained a fair bit of damage. I was musing on Twitter that moths have some great names, but the privileged folk who get to name them don’t seem to apply their art to naming spiders, which I think is a shame. For instance, this is the rosy-striped knot-horn moth Oncocera semirubella. So why do we never get to reply to some little spider as the semi-washboarded toe horn or something?

Rosy-striped knot-horn (or rhubarb and custard) moth Oncocera semirubella
Rosy-striped knot-horn (or rhubarb and custard) moth Oncocera semirubella
Rosy-striped knot-horn (or rhubarb and custard) moth Oncocera semirubella
Rosy-striped knot-horn (or rhubarb and custard) moth Oncocera semirubella

In any case, a fellow blogger named Douglas Boyes maintains that a more common vernacular name for this little moth is the ‘rhubarb and custard’. In any case, my book gives no common name for it at all, but says that it is ‘very local’, so another good find!

Went out for a walk after dark with the male offspring. He spotted a moving shadow down on the tarmac, which he correctly identified as a stonking great spider. I nearly trod on the bloomin’ thing, and I think I probably would have skidded … I had my compact camera with me and rattled off this flash shot, which reveals a male Tegenaria house spider of prodigious proportions, a bit early for the traditional autumn pilgrimage if you ask me. And has it got one freakishly long leg, or what?

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