Now you see me

I took this picture to identify the insect, but it turns out to be quite a pleasing composition, so here you are. If only it had done what it is supposed to do and flashed its yellow underwings when startled, I might have had a chance of identifying it as, er, a Yellow Underwing, but this one must be male, as it clearly hasn't read the manual

It did do what the Wildlife Trusts web site says it should, and "scuttle about the floor like a little mouse during the day". I know evolution is always right, but why does something that has invested all that genome, and several million years, into developing wings conclude that the best survival strategy against predators (or even against clumsy and poor sighted mamals like, say, me and woolly mammoths) it to make yourself almost invisible and and sit on the ground? (see extra - yes, he's there!) 

Invisible to me, but not to MrsM, who saw him before I trod on him. Supposedly, they are one of our commonest moths, but I can only remember seeing them once or twice before. It's perhaps not surprising, when you see that camouflage, and the state of the glasses that I sat on in a tent in Scotland 

The web sites say they are strongly attracted to light at night - the classic moth to a candle. I remember that being a big thing as a child: a window left ajar on a summer night drawing a cluster of large moths to the hot, incandescent kitchen light bulb - something between exciting and phobia-triggering. It never happens now: population decline, or low-energy bulbs, or so many light-sources that they are spoiled for choice? All of the above, I suppose

(The temporary second extra is for blipper chrispybox)