Hydrated oxides of iron and manganese

What is he talking about!  Well, that is the dictionary definition of the word "umber" and another definition is a "grayling" - but my dictionary does not specify if this is the fish or the butterfly.

As readers will have noticed, both Mike and I have been catching Mottled Umbers and these are one of the most variable moths in the UK. We could fill pages with photos of the various patterns.

But there are other "umbers", most of which have still to come for us, except that last night I had 2 Scarce Umber moths, not as scarce as their name implies. They are distinguished from Mottled Umber mainly because of  the golden colour and that the kink in the outer crossline is much less noticeable.


Scarce Umber

I had another 30 Exapate congelatella in the trap too, but just to clear up the "New to Shropshire" possibility, I was mistaken. I received my copy of the Shropshire Butterflies and Moths book (AM Riley, 1991) this morning and there are 2 previous records from Preston Montford (RIS trap) in Nov. 1986 and Oct 1987.