At night the temperature is still chilly. A drive back to Shandy Hall in the evening gives a fair indication of possible moth activity and over the last week hardly any have been seen in the headlights. (I’m sure most moth-trappers travel more slowly at night to avoid collisions. A feathery clout on the windscreen is almost tragic.)

The male and female of the Muslin moth are strikingly different. The male's drab, smoky-grey colouring reminded the taxonomist (Clerk 1759 – the year of the first edition of Vols I and II of Tristram Shandy) of a Carmelite mendicant friar, whose white mantle the female moth’s wings are supposed to resemble.

The first newt tadpole has wriggled free of its ectoplasmic blob of jelly. It is a delicate slip of barely nothing but containing a stripe of golden colour, reminiscent of that of a slow-worm. The sandy tint makes it just possible to identify on the pond bottom. A rather large diving-beetle has appeared – I hope the former does not end up inside the latter.