The moths always come up to scratch when we need them and yesterday was no exceptions. As well as having the grandchildren to stay, we had some very nice neighbours coming to call. I had my fingers crossed, therefore, when I nipped out in my pyjamas at 6am to turn off the light.
The omens were good. The night earlier, I found this beautiful Puss Moth snoozing just outside the trap on an iron gate. Its reluctance to go in reminded me to look at the area around the light as well as in the eggboxes themselves, when I checked things this morning.
To my great delight, I saw an Eyed Hawk moth at the foot of the wall, a few inches away from a roosting Poplar Hawk. This brings my tally of hawks this year to six with only the Privet, Pine and Hummingbird to come - unless I am lucky, as I was earlier this week with the Narrow-banded Bee Hawk.
The Eyed Hawk is always a success with visitors and so it proved today. Regular readers will realise that the elegant hand in the picture at the top of the post cannot possibly be mine. It belonged to the intrepid Mum of a girl the same age as our granddaughter who have fortuitously come to live nearby.
There have been lots of other mothy delights to which I will return in the next post. For now, here are a Poplar Hawk flashing its red warning blotches on its hindwings, a pair of White Ermines on another delicate hand, a Cinnabar ditto and one of the Puss Moth's smaller relatives, a Sallow Kitten:
No comments:
Post a Comment