Friday 30 August 2013

Drinkers at the Treacle Bar



Second time lucky. Success! Everything comes to he who waits and last night, which was much warmer than Wednesday's, the rum-and-treacling came up trumps. We daubed our gloopy mixture on three trees and a log at 8pm and within an hour the nice, fresh Copper Underwing above was absorbed.

It was so keen on the treacle, or so quickly affected by the rum, that it took not the slightest notice of clumsy manoeuvres as the tricky task of night photography with a torch got under way. Apologies that the pictures are a bit blurry; like treacling compared with a light trap, I felt back in the dark ages of pre-digital snapping and my old Brownie 127.


Still, here's my best effort at the moth from the side, showing its feeding under way, followed by a worse one which maybe has the saving grace of capturing the greedy flickering of the proboscis.


Then we have a series of other creatures propping up the bar, including slugs as in the Victorian reference in yesterday's post. No bats, toads or bank voles, though, but another moth, pictured at the end of the post, which decided to flit to the rival Buddleia Bar where I only got this over-flashed study of its rear end.

A caterpillar - whose?

An earwig

Two (of half-a-dozen) slugs


A spider - any arachnophiles around? Update: Yes, see Comments and heap
praise on Banished who points out that this is a Harvestman
Update: an early morning wasp




2 comments:

Banished To A Pompous Land said...

Your spider is actually a Harvestman. Not a true spider but still an arachnid. I couldn't be anymore specific though. I had loads up in the mountain forests last week together with 4" millipedes.

MartinWainwright said...

Thanks so much, B I was on the road yesterday and was trying to remember the name but got stuck on 'houseman' which a brief Google showed to be a different sort.

I enjoyed our treacling but it made the merits of the light trap shine more brightly than ever

You are very welcome to your millipedes...

all warm wishes

Martin