Sunday, November 25, 2007

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

I will tell you, soft, what light through yonder window breaks: it's bloody Allsop with his bloody mothtraps again.
Yes, mes potes, despite all the arguments to the contrary, I have fired up the new Robinson in my garden, and Clare the old Actinic in hers. We are after the December Moth, Poecilocampa populi, and anything else that blunders in.
What I can also tell you is that the moth is so called from the Greek, poikilos = varied, and kampe = larva, the larva being, it seems, well, varied; and from the Latin populus = poplar, the larva's foodplant.
What I cannot tell you is why this moth chooses to strut its stuff in December, when the cold, I would have thought, would play havoc with its wedding kit.
Nature's a mystery, and that's a fact.

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