Nelly the Elephant. Or Norman

I'm sorry that I have got very behind with posting news on the blog. Post-lockdown, life has got a lot busier and we're also eking out every moment of outdoor life before the Summer comes to an end.

So it was actually two weeks ago that we were walking home from a river swim with the grandchildren when we saw this chubby chap zooming across the road, luckily before he was squashed by one of the regularly passing cars.

He's an Elephant Hawk moth caterpillar in his final instar, or stage between sloughing off skins, when the green colouring which he - or maybe eventually she - has enjoyed since hatching from an egg, turns into the same grey as an elephant. We scooped him up and popped him in a box with a bit of soil and plenty of leaves and scrub.  My granddaughter was touchingly keen to find some willowherb leaves in case he was hungry but I sternly resisted, explaining that he (or she again) was looking for somewhere to form a cocoon and pupate and needed to be left alone.

He duly spun his coccon after a certain amount of rather alarming twisting too and from like a person in pain, a phenomenon I've seen before in caterpillars on the verge of this extraordinary change. Next morning, we found a tightly woven bundle of material with the cocoon deep inside. And that's where he'll stay until Spring, dissolving into a sort of soup before emerging as a glorious pink, olive and yellow moth - a species often shown here in the past, ever since the earliest days of the blog - the rather shady pic on the left is the first Elephant to visit me after Penny gave me the trap for my birthday in May 2008 - more here: http://martinsmoths.blogspot.com/2008/06/here-we-are.html

Below are a couple of pictures of the cocoon with its highly effective outer defence of spiky hawthorn twigs, the first taken a fortnight ago and the second just now. More news in the Spring, I hope

Meanwhile the trap has continued to attract a good range of late Summer moths with Poplar Hawks keeping up a good tally - a relief when the grandchildren are here and want interesting and unflappable moths on their fingers.

Other arrivals at the time of the cattie were welcomed by me in my pyjamas, including the lesser Treble-bar below, followed by a pug of some kind - but which? I will seek enlightenment either from a kindly reader or the Upper Thames Moths blog   Then, pyjama-less, we have a delicate Common Wave, a Bloodvein, a very dark example of the micro Pyrausta aurata (I think) and a Snout seen from underneath.

Finally, here are two Brimstones: first the moth and then the butterfly - the latter always the first to appear every year and still going strong. I saw several in the garden this afternoon.