Eye, eye

Soggy eggboxes are no place to lay your weary head but new moths keep coming on these drizzly nights. Today saw my fifth member of the Prominent family, this battered Swallow Prominent which I think - from its larger body size shown in the grassy picture - is a female.

Because of its faded colouring, I didn't recognise it at first and took it to be a Pebble Prominent with the translucent area of lost wingscales at its forewing tips misleading me by looking like the 'pebble' (see several posts back for an actual PP). But then the little white flashes registered and I happily clocked up this year's 45th species.

Here's peeping at you, kid

One small thing: can you see the moth's fake 'eye'?  I'd not noticed this before on a Swallow Prominent. It looks like a miniature version of the eyes which the Greeks and Persians painted on their triremes at Salamis. It's nowhere near the moth's actual eye, and nothing like as striking as the 'eyes' of a Peacock butterfly or Emperor moth, but maybe it is yet another little example of the remarkable range of camouflage which these insects deploy in their constant battle against predators.