Autumnal(ish)

Warm yesterday, sitting outside with tea and home made scones in the late afternoon, without a coat.

It is autumn though, there was a Yellow-browed Warbler in the garden the morning the day before. It happened to have a burst of calling from the clump of trees where I see most warblers in the garden, and I managed to glimpse it. Not much else of note though, there are ducks on The Shunan, a tagged Buzzard hanging about, a Shortie the far side of Bosquoy from my bike ride and a flock of 52 Linnets.

Moths have been few and far between, but in perfect conditions last night, other than rather a lot of rain at some point, I got something interesting. At first glimpse in the trap I thought it was a 2nd gen Common Marbled Carpet, but more careful examination of the images later proved otherwise. NFM and this for the site Grey Pine Carpet.

Grey Pine Carpet, Thera obeliscata.

This species can be a bit of a tricky ID, I think mostly in it's grey form, it can be almost indistinguishable from Spruce Carpet, and dissection of the genitalia apparently doesn't help. However, T. obeliscata males,have plain antennae with symmetrical segments whilst T. britannica males have asymetric antennal segments. Unfortunately this was a female when I checked, I had initially thought it to be a male. 

Fortunately a number of folk came to the rescue and especially SS who very kindly annotated a number of his photographs of both T. britannica and T. obeliscata and confirmed the above as Thera obeliscata. Excellent!