Surprises

I had a quick check of the front-door lights last night and was surprised to find a Flame Carpet moth - Xanthorhoe designata. I do get that here, but normally much later in the year (and we've had frost for 3 nights in a row).

Opened leaves on the Willow attracted my attention and I spotted this minute (5mm) beetle right at the topmost leaf. One of the Staphylinidae, but I'm not going for an id any closer than that.

But the biggest surprise of the year has to be this wonderful damselfly that emerged from my tropical fish tank:

I got some new plants recently, so the nymph must have been on one of those. Realising that many of the tropical specimens come from Asia, I googled asian damselflies and quickly arrived at Ceriagrion cerinorubellum, which is apparently not confused with any other species and ranges from India to Vietnam. So I'll get the specimen off to Dublin for registration as another new species for Ireland.

Two new species

This Creeping St. John's Wort - Hypericum humifusum - appeared at the edge of my vegetable patch. I have no idea where it came from, because it's a plant I have never found anywhere on my regular travels.


This next image is a perfect illustration of a key factor in moth identification: pattern comes before colour. This is the Flame Carpet - Xanthorhoe designata, and it should have a red/orange band in the centre of the wing. It took me quite a while to pick out the key identification features in the absence of the normal, bright colouring.

The process of moth identification is unusual in that even at the macro level, species can be difficult to separate. Many families of insects, fungi and some plants need microscopic analysis to separate them, but the trick to moths is knowing which of the macro features in front of you are the critical ones. Simply comparing pictures isn't going to lead you very far. In this case, the key features are: the twin rearward-pointing, blunt, points of the dark central band, the dark leading edge to the central band, and the overall rather equal split of the 4 wing bands: dark-pale-dark-pale.