Author: David Bradley

The etymology of the word Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera are the insects with scaly wings – the moths and butterflies, in other words. 160,000 species of moth worldwide, 20,000 butterflies. 2500 of the moths in the UK and a mere 52 butterfly species. Incidentally, the only truly distinguishing feature between moths and butterflies being that butterflies have club-like antennae and the majority of moths don’t.

Anyway, lepidoptera from the Greek “lepis” meaning scale” and “pteron” meaning wing (or feather). As in the flaky mica mineral lepidolite and the prehistoric winged reptiles, the pterosaurs.

So, anyway, here are some lepidoptera

 

You can see more of my lepidoptera photographs on my Imaging Storm website.

Lakenheath Revisited

We visited RSPB Lakenheath for the first time back in snowy February. They were just setting up a photography hide with naturalistic perches and feeders and a reed bed for Bunts, Tits, Kingfishers, and the like. In fact, first shot I got there was of a beautiful Kingfisher who popped in stared at the camera and disappeared within the space of about ten seconds. This visit, we had numerous Tits (Great, Blue, and Marsh), Reed Bunts, Goldfinches, and a few others, and a male Great Spotted Woodpecker, but did no spotted Kingfisher at this site this time.

Below Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) fishing

Great Tits (Parus major) feeding

Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) bunting

Juvenile Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) just starting its facepainting

There were plenty of caterpillars of Aglais io, the European Peacock, writhing on a nettle patch near New Fen Hide at RSPB Lakenheath. They are late, as this species usually lays eggs in June from which caterpillars soon emerge. Despite their defensive spines, many of them are eaten by parasitic wasps.

Meanwhile, we also saw all three of the site’s celebrity spiders: Wasp Spider, Crowend Orb Weaver, Marbled Orb Weaver. More about those in this post. But missed the Common Heath butterfly (plenty of Small and Large Whites, and one Comma).

The Toadflax (Butter and Eggs plant, Linaria vulgaris) was dying off but there were a few flowers still in bloom

There were countless airborne dragonflies and quite surprising not to see the local Hobbies (Falco subbuteo) chasing and eating this fast food supply, especially those distracted by their mating rituals.

More snaps from today’s trip to RSPB Lakenheath here.

Arachnodetour

A slight detour from the mothematics and the feathered aviators. If you’re an arachnophobe now is the time to look away or if you’re trying aversion therapy, start staring at the screen and scrolling now!

The first three photos are of a Wasp Spider (Argiope bruennichi) which had spun its orb web on the edge of the footpath leading from the Visitors’ Centre to the Photography Station:

The two archno photos below are of a Cross Spider, or more formally a Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus). In the lower of the two one spider is about to drag the more prominent one up and under the nettle leaves (not entirely sure whether the lower one was dead at this point):

The final spider of the day is a male Marbled Orb Weaver (Araneus marmoreus). The abdomen of the female resembles a swollen orange pumpkin giving the species its other common name of the Pumpkin Spider.

Heidelberg Thingstaette

The Heiligenberg is a wooded hill overlooking the town of Heidelberg in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It rises to around 440 metres and has been the site of several historical buildings: a Celtic hilltop fortification, a Roman sacred precinct, several mediaeval monasteries, modern lookout towers and a Thingstätte, built by the Nazis in the 1930s. The latter is a rather chilling place, despite a hot, sunny day with lots of tourists and dogwalkers.

During the Third Reich, the Heidelberg Thingstätte open-air theatre was constructed in 1934/5 on the ridge between the Heiligenberg and the Michaelsberg as part of the Thingspiel movement. It is one of four hundred such venues planned, but only forty built. Today, it is once more in use as a venue for open-air events.

 

Iron Prominent – Notodonta dromedarius

The Iron Prominent (Notodonta dromedarius) is fairly common across Great Britain, turned up in the trap a couple of times in the second week of August. Got better photos of the specimen on the morning of 13th where it sat on the back of my hand after jumping from its overnight resting place on a cardboard egg carton in the trap. It walked a little and then quickly fired up its wings to high-speed before flying off.

Two broods fly each year May-June and then again in August. Except in the North where they brood only once June-July, according to UKMoths. The humps on the green caterpillar’s back give rise to the second part of the scientific name. But, it’s the protruding tuft of hair on the trailing edge of the forewing in many species of the Notodonta moths that gives them the “prominent” of their common names. Although there are only four Notodontids in the UK, there are 3,800 known species in this family around the world, mostly in The Tropics.

Orange Swift – Triodia sylvina

Orange Swift (Triodia sylvina) – A first for the garden 13th August 2018 in three weeks or so of moth-ing with Rob’s homemade actinic Robinson trap.

Given how brightly coloured this specimen is compared to other photos of the species on UKMoths, for instance, I am assuming it is a male. The males are also smaller than the females, such sexual dimorphism does not seem to be a common trait in the moth world, although it does occur (viz some females are wingless and the Emperor Moth females are like a desaturated version of the male). The species is a member of the Hepialidae of which there are, it seems, only five members in the UK: Orange Swift (Triodia sylvina), Common Swift (Korscheltellus lupulina), Map-winged Swift (Korscheltellus fusconebulosa), Gold Swift (Phymatopus hecta), and the Ghost Moth (Hepialus humuli). Update: 11 May 2019, first Common Swift to the trap. Not seen any of these others yet.

The Orange Swift flies later in the year than the other Swifts, July-September (in the British Isles), so spotting one in the middle of August is about right, although UKMoths explains that it inhabits waste ground, moorland, and other wild places. Doesn’t say much for my gardening skills.

The larvae (caterpillars) feed on the roots of bracken, dandelion, dock, hop, and viper’s bugloss. It overwinters twice as a larva.

Cat Zero by Jennifer Rohn

Cat Zero by Jennifer Rohn: the best novel I’ve read in a long time. Gripping, engaging…infectious from start to finish. It’s all here from timeless issues of the human condition to modern problems, disease, ethics, activism, terrorism, diversity, science. All written with mesmerising imagery and humanity from the pioneer of lab-lit. Excellent.

Cat Zero by Jenny Rohn
Cat Zero by Jenny Rohn

Canary-shouldered Thorn – Ennomos alniaria

Night of 10th August 2018 saw a serious drop in temperature. We’ve been enjoying/sweltering in relatively balmy upper teens and into the 20s at night since May, but last night it dropped below 10 degrees Celsius in many places. The moth-ers are almost all reporting very few specimens in their traps. Personally, I had one Spectacle, a solitary Silver Y, a single Willow Beauty in the trap, and another on the white sheet hanging next to the light, and a few LBJs (Little Brown Jobs).

So here’s one of the highlights from a couple of weeks ago, a Canary-shouldered (Ennomos alniaria). It is a geometer moth (Geometridae) found across Europe. Geometers get their name from the behaviour of their larvae or caterpillars, which are whimsically also known as inchworms, their method of locomotion being reminiscent of someone measuring the earth. They’re also called loopers, for the “loop” the caterpillars form as they do their measuring.

In the UK, the adults breed in a single generation from July to September. They’re commonly found in woodland and gardens and the larvae eat the leaves of various deciduous trees. Indeed, the second part of its scientific binomial, the alniaria refers to the alder tree. The Ennominae are the largest sub-family of geometer moths, with some 9700 known species in 1100 genera.

Original Periodic Table song – Tom Lehrer’s The Elements

TL:DR – American musician and songwriter Thomas Andrew Lehrer wrote a humourous song in which he sings the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the Major-General’s Song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance.

Periodic Table Song

I’ve been meaning to learn and record a cover of this song, but am yet to get around to it. Meanwhile, here are the original lyrics to The Elements.

The Elements (To be sung to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s A Modern Major General)

by Tom Lehrer

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.

There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and caesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, and
Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There’s sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
Tungsten, tin and sodium.

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered.

You can listen to Lehrer here (3700kb Quicktime Mov file). Search on The Vatican Rag and Masochism Tango for more of Lehrer’s wonderful material

Check out a fantastic animated version of The Elements here. (Someone should do a Peter Kay to this song and get it back in the Top Twenty, that would do wonders for the image of chemistry, I’m sure).

Read about the discoveries of elements 111 and 115, and our historical timeline showing the discovery of the elements. An updated version to cope with the new elements was written and recorded by Helen Arney.