Thursday 13 November 2014

Elephant's end


The weather has largely continued wet and/or cold, I've been busy and the trap has been idle. Hence the peace and quiet which reigns here. I'm interrupting it only to record an extremely late-flying butterfly, a Peacock which soared away above an outbuilding at Blenheim Palace where we spent a happy few hours with American friends.

That was at the weekend; and I've seen a dozen more Peacocks since then, but they were all ones either snoozing or disturbed from hibernation by me during our continuing, very long-term sorting out of all our post-move jumble. A more interesting entomological find during this task was the Large Elephant Hawk, above, which was rolled up in a vast piece of maroon fabric which we've had in store for a good few years. Maybe someone was doing some similar Autumn-cleaning at Blenheim.

Judging by its decaying condition, the beautiful moth been doing posthumous service for other members of the insect world. As the doggerel says: Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em. Little fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Martin,

You could say that it's both moth:eaten and moth-eaten.

Finally got time to catch up on the blogosphere, work pressures have meant little time for niceties over recent months.

It's great to see you've had some lovely moths. I've added a couple of comments to earlier posts - Hibernit and Peace and quiet - as there has been some confusion over RLQ and Brick.

Regards

Dave

MartinWainwright said...

Hi Dave and very nice to see your name pop up again. I very much appreciate the time you spare to put me right! I'm also glad about the Brick as I don't think I've recorded that this year - not that I haven't had any, I'm sure; just that I haven't recognised them.

I should have thought of 'Moth-eaten' for my title. Thanks v much for that too!

All warm wishes, Martin