Humming along

It was an excellent moth day yesterday although I failed to get a picture of a very agreeable visitor, a Hummingbird Hawk moth. I was pottering in the garden in bright and very warm sunshine when it appeared on a pink phlox, zooming around and nectaring as if there was no tomorrow.

I felt in my belt pouch and, curses, there was no camera. I had put it on charge just before wandering out. I nipped inside but, unlike the miracle of the Brown Argus failing-battery photo last week, i wasn't lucky this time. The hummer was still there when I got back but only for a few seconds. It didn't return and, as a busy little migrant from warmer lands, I don't expect it to. it will be foraging adventurously somewhere else.

My top picture therefore comes from the archive. I took it on Paxos in 2010. Happy memories. But there was plenty of solace in the moth trap on the next - Saturday/Sunday - night. Deep in an eggbox cone was the lovely Black Arches with its magnificent antennae in my second and third photos. And sitting on the hydrangea just above the trap was the handsome Canary-shouldered Thorn below.