Hawkeye

Penny and I were watching a Sparrowhawk wheeling stylishly over our garden yesterday afternoon. This morning, the mothtrap had the year's first hawk moth. Far bigger than almost all other UK species, these still give me the thrill I first felt when I found Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillars on rosebay willowherb along the verge of Leeds ring road - exactly where John Armitage, the kindly and learned natural history curator at the City Museum, had told my brother and me to look.

Our arrival is a Lime Hawk Moth and an interesting one - variety Brunnea which replaces the usual range of green colours on the wings with foxy brown. You can see how much larger it is than the 'standard' UK moth by comparing its size alongside a penny with a similar scale picture of a Common Quaker, also in the trap this morning (below left).

I've just looked back to previous years' blogs which confirm my suspicion that everything is early this year. The first hawkmoth of 2010 was a Poplar Hawk which arrived on 25 May. In 2009, they made their debut on May 31 (a Poplar again) and from 2004-8 I have no records of any earlier than the first week in June when both Poplar and Elephant Hawks appeared. There's a sense here in Leeds that the current spell of lovely weather, which has now lasted nearly a fortnight, has accelerated everything's in the natural world's emergence from a winter which included those dire temperatures in January, and especially December.

Here, below, is the Lime Hawk from the side, looking more like a lobster than a moth. This is the sort of picture which can give the heebie-jeebies to those unfamiliar with moths, but that's nothing a little study of the insects and their endless fascination won't put right. If only Osama bin Laden had gone in for such things, not to mention Hitler whose death was also announced, appropriately, on May Day.