Meanwhile in Mexico...

My elder son Tom is The Economist's correspondent in Central America which is incredible from the moth point of view, not that he or our lovely daughter-in-law Abi are quite as crazed about the insects as I am. But they kindly send despatches when they find something exotic on the wing or at rest, and last year they took Penny and me to see the Monarch butterfly migration which I had always dreamed of doing.

And now look at this - 'the Terrible Moth of Chiapas', as Tom calls it - from the southernmost Mexican state where he is on an assignment. I have no idea what it is but will attempt to find out; or if a moth person from the New World passes this way, maybe they could very kindly tell me. Oak Eggarish on a grand scale, is the best I can do.

Abi meanwhile was in Mexico City when the 7.4 Richter scale earthquake struck, and as the Guardian report memorably put it, buildings cracked and people rushed out in panic because the city stands in part on the former lake of Montezuma's capital and the ground is 'like jelly'. She is fine and so is their building, thank goodness. And so, I hope, are the local moths. Tom was struck by the antennae on this one; can they detect distant tremors, I wonder?