TL:DR – The origins of the aphorism about solitary swallows and the summer.
In his writings on ethics, Aristotle had it that:
One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.
Usually, we abbreviate it to just the first part of the quotation, suggesting that seeing an early swallow in the spring may well not mean that the good weather of summer is about to arrive.
Barn swallow, Hirundo rustica
Indeed, in Aesop’s fable, The Young Man and the Swallow, we learn of a fellow who spends most of his money on gambling and good living, when he arrives peniless and sees an early swallow in the spring he sells the coat from his back to feed his habits and when the weather turns for the worse, tragically dies of the cold.
It is most likely that Aesop was inspired by the proverb written in Aristotle’s work, Nicomachean Ethics, rather than Aristotle providing us with an executive summary of the fable.
Either way, the Swallows have been in these here parts for at least a couple of weeks now and as you’d expect, it’s a bit chilly at the moment and pouring with rain. We always knew they weren’t great weather forecasters, I suppose.
Footnote
Caught one in low flight over a lawn at NT Plas Newydd in May. Denoised with DxO and motion blur sharpening with Topaz Sharpen.
While most of my invertebrate photography focuses on Lepidoptera, it’s also fun to get shots of other insects, such as this large caddisfly, Stenophylax permistus, which turned up in the moth trap overnight. I’ve seen it several times before, but hadn’t previously felt inclined to take a photo until this morning.
Caddisfly, Stenophylax permistus
The scaly-winged Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies, same thing) and the hairy-winged Trichoptera (caddisflies, also known as sedge-flies or rail-flies) share a common evolutionary ancestor. The former group evolved to have scales on their wings while the latter has ostensibly smooth, albeit veined, wings, that have hairs. The two together sit within the superorder Amphiesmenoptera. There are about 14500 species of Trichoptera and 160,000 species of Lepidoptera.
This large species of caddisfly is, I believe, Stenophylax permistus. I don’t believe there’s an official vernacular, or common, name for this insect, but if we look at its scientific binomial literally, we could invent one. Steno means “narrow”, phylax means “guard” and permistus means “permitted”. So the common name for this caddisfly could be the “Permitted Narrow Guard”? Perhaps…
The caddisflies have aquatic larvae, which is handy as we have a garden pond, but the adults are terrestrial.
TL:DR – Using photo editing tools to get the most out of your butterfly photos.
It is Green Hairstreak season. I’d heard that this tiny, shimmering green butterfly had been spotted on Devil’s Dyke in Cambridgeshire in mid-April, so I headed out on foot to a local woodland patch that very day where the butterfly had been seen a couple of years ago. I was in luck! One specimen showing briefly. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photograph on that visit.
Next bright, sunshiny day headed out with Mrs Sciencebase to take another look. There were none on the expected patch, but we kept at it and rounded a corner where there was a Dogwood thicket and various other bushes with a crowd of Green Longhorn moth! So I got a couple of snaps of those.
Green Hairstreak, Callophrys rubi
Mrs Sciencebase spotted the first Green Hairstreak landing. And so with a little bit of patience I managed to get a few overexposed snaps. Using a new second-hand lens (Canon EF 75-300mm lens, 1:4.5-5.6 L IS USM) on my Canon 7Dii), I’ve not quite got used to just how much light it lets in compared to the Sigma 150-600mm I’ve been using since January 2017). Anyway, once I realised the rookie mistake I was making (ISO too high), I homed in on the other Green HSs that were fleeting fluttering into my field of view and finally got a sharp shot at one sideways on. This shorter lens has a much more manageable minimum focusing distance of about one metre as opposed to the three metres of the Sigma.
Obviously, I shoot RAW so that I have more options for developing my photographs just as photographers did when developing their negatives. The tools are software rather than trays of chemical solutions and dark rooms with red lights. Nevertheless, they’re just the tools of the trade and the means by which one extracts a photo from the RAW file. I have outlined the process I generally use for processing my bird photographs. But, this butterfly warranted a slightly different approach.
First step after downloading to PC was to run it through DxO PureRaw 3. This software, which I’ve mentioned several times before, analyses the RAW meta data, identifies camera and lens combination and applies basic corrections such as removing vignetting and pincushion or other distortions inherent to your kit. It also gives you the choice to denoise the photo. It has a slick AI system built in, which I reckon knocks down the ISO equivalent by three stops. So, for a photo that starts of noisy (grainy) because the ISO is relatively high, you can get rid of a lot of the fuzz in one simple, automated step.
The output from PureRaw is a DNG file (a simulated RAW), so you can then import it into a photo editor with the corrections and denoising done and start as if it were the RAW file straight from the camera. This is a real boon as it lets you then do level adjustments, save blownout areas, adjust white balance etc. It also lets you open the file in Topaz Sharpen AI. So, with this butterfly, that’s what I did.
The Topaz software also has Denoise, but it was sharpening that I wanted with this photo. It can be done very subtly or you can retrieve details at quite a powerful level. My usual next step after such initial treatments of the RAW is then to open it in PaintShop Pro (a less expensive alternative to Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom). I am quite happy with its options for cropping, adjusting levels, white balance, saturation, and vibrancy. It is also relatively easy to remove distracting spots and specks in an image to clean up the final photo.
The adult Green Hairstreak, Callophrys rubi, usually emerge at the end of March, into April, to mate and are done by the end of June. They are obviously green, but their hairstreak is but a faint line on the underside of the wings and is even sometimes completely absent or at best a row of faint dots. The green colouration is, as with the colours of other butterflies, due to iridescence and diffraction of light by the scales on the wings rather than the presence of pigments. Lepidoptera, means scaly (or tiled) wings.
The genus part of the butterfly’s scientific name, Callophrys rubi, derives from a Greek word meaning “beautiful eyebrows”, while the species name rubi comes from Rubus, bramble, one of the species’ host plants. There are numerous other “hairstreak” butterflies.
TL:DR – An update on my butterflying efforts in 2023.
Regular readers will know I’ve been making a concerted effort to see more species of butterfly during the last couple of summers. Obviously, most people will have seen the relatively common ones – Brown Argus, Comma, Common Blue, Green-veined White, Large White, Orange Tip, Painted Lady, Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Copper, Small Tortoiseshell, Small White.
But, there are many more including various fritillaries, hairstreaks, other types of blue, other types of white that are not seen so frequently. They have limited ranges and sites, nectar and lay eggs only in particular environments, and are generally not seen in gardens or on general walks in the countryside, unless you’re very lucky.
European Peacock, Aglais io
So, here’s a list of the species I’ve been targeting over the last couple of years, some I’m yet to see, others I have “ticked” as it were:
*Ones I have not seen nor photographed in the UK. Although I have seen Swallowtail larva.
Clouded Yellow, Colias croceus
I’ve put together a spreadsheet so I can see the where and when and am sharing a portion of that here for you. It’s centred on Cambridge, but spills over into neighbouring counties where there are species that don’t yet appear in this county. I add the best photos I get of the various species to the butterfly gallery on my Imaging Storm website.
I was asked to offer some advice on how to attract more birds to the garden. (Here’s my garden tick list, by the way). I wrote a rather long article with lots of detail and added some bird photos of species we’ve seen in ours. I then asked ChatGPT to summarise the article and give me ten bullet points. This is my heavily edited version of the algorithm’s output:
Attracting Birds to Your Garden:
Provide water: Place shallow bowls or birdbaths with clean water at ground level and/or on a stand. Create a wildlife pond and extend it to create spillover area that becomes permanently muddy and diversifies habitat. [As of early 2024, I’ve attempted to create a spillover for our pond]
Offer bird food: Use a variety of feeders and food to attract different bird species. Use feeders designed for specific types of food such as suet and seed balls, Nyjer seeds, mixed seeds, sunflower hearts, peanuts, and dried mealworms. Move the feeders to different parts of your garden every week or so to avoid too much guano and waste accumulating in one place.
Plant native bushes and trees: Bushes that produce berries in winter can provide a food supply for birds such as Blackbirds, Mistle Thrushes, Fieldfares, and Redwings. Ivy flowers and berries can also attract insects and provide food for birds in winter. Bushes and trees also provide shelter and potential nest sites for birds. Create a multi-levelled environment with diverse planting, perhaps terraced, and with lots of nooks and crannies, hiding places, and perching points
Install bird boxes: Place bird boxes fairly high up on posts or trees, with a line of sight from a perching spot opposite and several metres away if possible. Also, look into installing Swift boxes or swift bricks.
Avoid shiny, moving ornaments: Hanging or installing shiny, moving ornaments can startle birds and discourage them from visiting your garden.
Don’t trim or prune too hard: Leaving bushes and trees to grow a little wild and allow wildflowers to bloom, this will encourage insects, which in turn provide food for birds in the form of adults, larvae, and caterpillars. Moreover, don’t be too keen to keep your garden tidy, if you want to see wildlife, it has to be a little wild.
Avoid pesticides and herbicides: There is the potential for harm to birds and their food sources in your garden.
Don’t scatter bread or cooked products: These can be high in sugar and salt and are not suitable for birds. They can also attract rats.
Monitor birds at the feeders and birdbath for signs of illness: If you notice birds looking ill or with lumps on their heads or bodies, remove all feeders, discard uneaten contents, and clean thoroughly. Wait a couple of weeks before putting the feeders out again to allow diseased birds to disperse.
Avoid Astroturf and excessive paving or gravel: Basically, don’t design your garden to limit natural habitats for the wildlife.
At the last count, I’d ticked more than 50 bird species in and above our garden. You can find the more or less complete list here.
TL:DR – Lepidoptera with fake eyes, ocelli, an example of convergent evolution?
The European Peacock (Aglais io) has four “eyes”, known as ocellus, singular ocellus) on its wings just like the Emperor (Saturnia pavonia), it’s a nice example of pareidolia and of convergent evolution.
Peacock Butterfly
Butterflies, of course, are just one branch on the moth family tree, we make a distinction in English because of our language and not much else. All the characteristics that are meant to set moths and butterflies apart are found in each, lots of day-flying moths, several with clubbed antennae, loads that are brightly coloured and patterned, some with thin bodies, some with thick, many that close their wings together above their bodies.
Male Emperor Moth
There is one difference…butterflies cannot unhook their forewings from their hindwings, moths have a hook called a frenulum that allows them to disconnect forewings from hindwings. That is the only physical difference between moths and butterflies. There is one exception to the rule the Regent Skipper butterfly, Euschemon rafflesia, of Australia, which has this frenulum hook.
Actually, there is another difference but this is not about the adults…the larvae of moths can sometimes spin a silk cocoon to protect them when they become a pupa. Butterflies don’t make silk for their pupa (chrysalis).
Funnily enough, butterflies are a grouping of micro moths. The term micro as opposed to macro, doesn’t relate to their size as some micros are far bigger than macros. The distinction is about evolutionary position on the lepidopteral family tree. It’s worth noting that new genetics research can change established taxonomical positions on a whim when close relatives are sometimes found or lost.
TL:DR – Tick list of wildlife from my return to the reserves.
Finally, managed a half-decent walk (4km) around a local nature reserve with Mrs Sciencebase this morning after weeks of sporadically atrocious weather, work commitments, and a crippling rip in my Achilles tendon. Nice to be back among the reeds and water espying and hearing all kinds of wildlife:
Birds
Fenland Flyby – Bittern over reed beds at RSPB Ouse Fen
Bittern (flypast), Black-headed Gull, Buzzard, Canada Goose, Cetti’s Warbler (calls from three), Coot, Cormorant, Crane (very distant), Great Crested Grebe, Greylag Goose, Heron, Kestrel, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Linnet, Little Grebe, Magpie, Mallard, Marsh Harrier (three or four), Meadow Pipit, Mute Swan, Pheasant, Pochard, Reed Bunting, Reed Warbler (calls from at least three), Rook, Sand Martin, Sedge Warbler, Shoveler, Skylark, Stock Dove, Swallow, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon.
Mammals
Chinese Water Deer, Hare
Lepidoptera
Large White
You can find my photos of all of those species on my Imaging Storm website.
TL:DR – How to fall in love with moths and mothing.
Regular Sciencebase readers will know only too well that back in July 2018 I got hooked on moths. An enthusiastic friend lent me a moth trap he had built himself for his children many years ago. The trap is basically a wooden box with a plastic funnel and an ultraviolet light supported by stiff plastic vanes).
Moth trap
The UV light attracts the night-flying creatures, some of them bump into the vanes, drop into the funnel and then find a cozy corner in one of the empty egg cartons put inside the box before “lighting up”. The amateur, or indeed professional, lepidopterist examines the catch at dawn, recording species and species number and later releasing the moths off-site back into undergrowth or bushes.
It’s fascinating and fun and at the time of writing almost five years since I first “lit up”, I have seen, photographed, and logged well over 450 different species of moth in my Cambridgeshire garden. The variety and diversity of shape, size, colouration, and patterning is incredible. I must admit that I had always been a little irrationally wary of moths despite the fact that they are completely harmless. After all, unlike many other types of insect, they don’t bite and they don’t sting.
Poplar Hawk-moth on Rob’s hand on that fateful day in 2018
It was a test run with my moth-trap maker friend, Rob, who had stopped trapping moth and turned his hand to making guitars, that got me hooked. He lit up one July evening and invited me to the grand opening the next morning. There must have been 100 or more moths in the trap, a few that were simply dull and grey or brown, but among them some huge hawk-moths, some shiny green moths, orange ones, red ones, patterned ones, ones with daggers and arches, all kinds.
Having got a little up close and personal with the Poplar Hawk-moth in Rob’s trap, allowing it to perch on my hand while I took a close look, this single dose of informal aversion therapy, seemed to cure my mild phobia about moths, my mottephobia. I had previously photographed one or two moths that turned up in the house, but essentially I made 180-degree about turn from aversion to addiction. I borrowed Rob’s trap from him permanently as summer turned to autumn, and paid him an honorarium for the privilege.
Convolvulus Hawk-moth
I have trapped regularly in all that time since. I’ve also acquired various other UV sources including a LepiLED. The low-wattage LepiLED runs off a USB battery pack and is entirely portable, so I have taken it on a few excursions with an adapted, portable Heath trap I bought off another ex-mothing friend. My pots for managing the morning moths came from yet another ex-mother friend!
Hummingbird Hawk-moth
I have also bought pheromone lures to attract various species, including Emperor and some of the clearwing moths. I have planted wildflowers and various scented flowers in the garden to attract species like Hummingbird Hawk-moth and Convolvulus Hawk-moth. A recent addition to my mothing measures was to buy a bottle of amyl acetate (used in aromatherapy apparently despite it being toxic). It has a strong fruity smell and is entirely harmless to moths but attracts various species.
Is it a kind of madness, this mothematical obsession? Maybe. Am I happy to be part of #TeamMoth and to regularly declare that #MothsMatter? Too right! I have written about the ethics and importance of moth-trapping as a citizen science effort and I have also written about why moths really do matter. Would I recommend it as a hobby or citizen science project? By my scaly wings, I would, of course!
A moth known as a Clouded Yellow butterfly
Incidentally, butterflies are just one grouping within the Lepidoptera, just like the less publicly familiar groupings, the noctuids, hawk-moths, erebids and others. Indeed, butterflies are grouping within the broader clade we know as the micro moths (an unfortunate term that doesn’t always reflect their size but is rather connected to their evolutionary ancestry). The other major clade is the macro moths, but there are some micros that are bigger than even the biggest macros.
Male Emperor moth
The tragedy is that their numbers and diversity have declined considerably since my childhood in the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps even in the last five years since I started mothing. First full year, I would see a couple of hundred moths of 70 or so species, but in the last couple of years those numbers have been much lower even on peak summer nights.
TL:DR – It was learning some of the common names for the macro moths that helped piqued my interest in being an amateur lepidopterist and citizen science moth-er.
There are around 1800 moth species seen in the UK. A large proportion of these are the so-called micro moths (which isn’t about size, but rather their position in evolutionary history) and they are usually referred to by their scientific name rather than a common name although some do have colloquial names too. But, almost all of the macro moths have an intriguing common name. Here are some of my favourites
The Clifden Nonpareil (Catocala fraxini) – This large moth is known for its striking appearance, with its black and white wings and a powder blue band across its hindwings. Its name, “Nonpareil,” means “unrivaled” in French and the Clifden, is the archaic spelling of Cliveden, as in Cliveden House the site where it was recorded scientifically in the early days of formal entomology.
Clifden Nonpareil
The Buff-tip (Phalera bucephala) – At rest, this moth look like a piece of broken silver birch twig. The Buff-tip of its common name refers to the colour of the ends of its forewings.
Buff-tip
The Merveille du Jour (Griposia aprilina) – This moth’s name comes from French, meaning marvel of the day. It’s a stunning green moth with intricate black patterning on its wings, it blends in well with lichen-covered surfaces.
Merveille du Jour
The Coxcomb Prominent (Ptilodon capucina) – When at rest this otherwise brown and relatively innocuous moth has a profile shape resembling the a cockerel’s comb. The colouration and shape make it otherwise resemble a curling autumnal leaf.
Coxcomb Prominent
The Herald (Scoliopteryx libatrix) – This moth is known for its stately orange orange wings, when at rest it looks like a shield or perhaps the penant that might hang from a horn player’s instrument at a ceremony.
The Herald
The Old Lady (Mormo maura) – The Old Lady is named for its resemblance to black or dark-brown silk commonly worn during mourning by widows of the late 18th Century when the species was named. It is sometimes known as the Black Underwing or the Grave Brocade, although both those archaic names are frowned upon.
The Old Lady
The Vapourer (Orgyia antiqua) – This moth, occasionally known as the Rusty Tussock, is as that latter name would suggest largely brown, although the males have a white spot on each forewing which gives something of the appearance of eyes staring back at wouldbe predators. It is known as The Vapourer because the wingless and so flightless females exude pheromones, producing a vapour trail to attract the day-flying males.
The Vapourer
The Shark (Cucullia umbratica) – This fairly large moth gets its common name from its grey and sleek appearance when at rest and its thoracic crest adds to the allusion of a shark-like shape.
The Shark
The Ruby Tiger (Phragmatobia fuliginosa) – This moth is known for its striking appearance, with its bright red colour and furry body. It bears little resemblance to the other “tiger” moths, which have a more butterfly-like appearance, although only the Jersey Tiger as stripes, the others are spotty.
Ruby Tiger
The Nutmeg (Anarta trifolii) – This moth is named after its speckly grey appearance, which must have reminded the early entomologists of the spice, perhaps the face of a piece of nutmeg after grating.
The Nutmeg
I reviewed Peter Marren’s excellent book about the names of the Lepidoptera, Emperors, Admirals, and Chimney Sweepers, on Sciencebase some time ago. I still refer to it on an almost daily basis during the peak mothing season.
TL:DR – There is no evidence that Blackcaps that overwinter in the UK are “demigrating”, they all tend to leave by mid-April. That said, much of their migratory behaviour remains a mystery.
I’ve written about a warbler species we see here in the summer known as the Blackcap, Sylvia atricapilla, several times on Sciencebase. Commonly, for many, many years, thousands in fact, Blackcaps that migrate to the UK in the summer have spent the northern winter in Iberia or North Africa. They migrate north to south and back again, year in, year out.
There is, however, a number of Blackcaps that tend to spend the northern summer in mainland continental Europe, Southern Germany and Austria, for instance. Those in the western part of that region then head somewhat west for the winter to spend the colder months on the Iberian peninsula or in the northern parts of Africa. Those in the eastern part head South East presumably to Serbia, Croatia, Greece etc.
Overwintering Blackcap on mistletoe
In the last 20-30 years or so there has been a shift in behaviour among these German Blackcaps, ast least the ones in the west. Some of them seem to have lost their internal compass calibration and have been turning up in the UK for the winter instead of the slightly balmier climes of Spain and Portugal. Their internal compass is genetically programmed into these short-lived migratory birds though and so this “mistake” has proven beneficial as it has proliferated in a sub-population of the birds that find well-stocked garden feeders in British gardens. They have thus taken to over-wintering here and then find their way back to the continent for the summer come late March or early April.
Over the last few years, we usually have a male in our Cambridgeshire garden, and one year recently we had both a male and a female. They seem to join in the stripping of mistletoe berries from the trees as well as partaking of the fat balls we hang in the garden. Previously, they have departed in the spring not to be seen again until the winter. We never see Blackcaps in our gardens in the summer, but we do see them in local woodland and these would’ve been birds that overwintered in Iberia and North Africa.
Blackcap visiting for the summer
There is now some intriguing evidence that the UK overwintering Blackcaps are not mixing so well with their Iberian counterparts and that we might begin to see speciation taking place. In this, they might ultimately stop interacting and mating and begin to diverge genetically into two sub-species. If the evolutionary pressure is sustained they might one day split into two distinct species.
Now, the male that has been in our garden through the whole of the winter of 2022-2023 has recently been singing rather vigourously from our rowan tree. It was as if he was attempting to establish breeding territory although given his shyness at the feeders compared to the sparrows and even the tits, maybe he was just singing with frustration. Of course, the males do start to sing, or at least partially sing, in March under normal circumstances, perhaps rehearsing for their leading role once they get back to their summer breeding grounds.
I asked Greg Conway of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), who has undertaken a lot of research on Blackcap migration about the misinformation that seems to be circulating that claims some overwintering Blackcaps are becoming resident. You can read about work on Blackcap migration in a paper from van Doren et al. on which he is co-author here: https://doi.org/doi/10.1111/gcb.15597
“Virtually all the wintering birds do migrate in the spring and head across the Channel,” he told me. “Currently, there are just a handful of British-bred birds that have remained here to winter, amongst the more than 1000 of ringing recoveries.” He adds that “The winter tracking work did not reveal any resident individuals.”
The bottom line then is that demigration is not happening in Blackcaps. Conway expanded on what I suspected about the behaviour of my own overwintering Blackcap:
“Typically, the wintering birds depart between mid-March and mid-April.,” he explains. “And, just before they go, they gorge themselves at the garden feeders to build fat stores for their long journey. So you might see a bit more feeding activity this week.” He added that I should expect my Blackcap to depart in the next spell of fine weather. Indeed, by the 9th April our overwintering Blackcap had departed.
We know a lot about bird migration and movement but much remains a mystery. I’ve previously discussed the cases of Little, Great White, and Cattle Egrets, Spoonbill, and Glossy Ibis. All of those species have extended their range into the UK over the last few decades. Of course, many migratory patterns have been altered by the ice ages, shifts and changes in environment and food supply, and in the modern age climate change.
“There is still so much we don’t know about Blackcaps and their migratory behaviour,” adds Conway. Licensed ringing and citizen science observations and reporting from birders, of course, are helping build up a picture of what happens. Hopefully, one day we can expect to get a clear understanding of this little bird’s comings and goings. Conway adds that there is also an initiative for reporting ringed Blackcap sightings. If you see any ringed individuals you can send date and place details and whether male (black cap) or female (brown cap, also juveniles have a brown cap) to [email protected]
UPDATE: 24th March 2024 – Having not seen any Blackcaps in our garden this winter, sudden sighting of a male feeding on our mistletoe. So, maybe he’s been around but just not visible. The Merlin app has certainly heard him a couple of times in the last few days when I stick my phone next to our open bedroom window some mornings at 7am-ish. (Our overwintering male Blackcap had departed our garden by the end of the first week of April 2023).
