The sun-warmed heather of Dryburn Moor stretches away, rust-coloured and hummocky, to a soft horizon of uplands, woods and fields. There’s little breeze and clouds barely move in a hazy sky. The right conditions for seeing emperor moths.
I carefully unpack the pheromone lure I’ve been carrying in a sealed box, dropping the terracotta-coloured rubber bung into the cut-off toe from a pair of tights. Pushing the birch branch I brought into spongy ground, I tie the lure at waist height without touching the bag, mindful of stories of moths drawn to clothing and fingers. Less than a minute from setting it out, there’s a rustling like crumpled dry paper and a blur of wings: the fluttering of a male emperor moth.
Dramatically patterned and roughly as large as a peacock butterfly, Saturnia pavonia flies between late March and early June. The female is strikingly marked in silver and charcoal, with four large spots, dark as owls’ eyes. The male too has eye spots but is fiery burnt orange and umber. She will climb a heather stalk to attract a mate, emitting an irresistible pheromone from a gland at the tip of her furry grey-banded abdomen, striped like a racoon’s tail. His feathered antennae give increased surface area for picking up her scent from up to 3km away.
The female flies at night in order to find egg-laying sites. Tiny caterpillars will emerge from her clusters of eggs; black and hairy to start with, they turn green with black hoops and yellow spots. After feeding on heather or brambles, the pupae overwinter in papery brown cocoons on low-level plant stems.
There are three males here now, full of restless energy, bumping into my hair, twirling in the air, dancing around the lure. An iridescent violet oil beetle clambers over the grass by my feet. A hesitant lizard lies camouflaged against the matting of fallen rush stems. Curlews circle the wide moor as I stand here dazzled by moths, and all the while larks sing, full-throated, above me.
• The leperello that Susie White described in her diary of 11 January is part of an exhibition in Robinson-Gay gallery, Hexham, until 24 May
