I always hope for something extra in the moth trap on my birthday; and since the latter falls on 18 May, in the middle of the early season rush, I am usually rewarded. This year happily was no exception, with this lovely male Lime Hawk at rest on the first eggbox I lifted out.
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Its appearance makes three hawks for me so far this year, with a couple of visits from an Eyed Hawk and at least half-a-dozen from Poplar Hawks, the latest snoozing very comfortably in just one egg-shaped concavity of another eggbox this morning.
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My birthday presents, meanwhile, included - to my unbounded joy - the new, third edition of the Moth Bible, from Penny who famously started all this off by giving me not only the first edition but the actual moth trap way back in 2005. She is a very patient moth widow and indeed far better than I am at spotting moths which venture into the house. Although her note is understandable, the new edition has loads of extra info and is much more up-to-date on the changing dispersal areas of the various species - many of them on the increase. Update: I should have said that one of the titbits I gleaned from the book when looking up Lime Hawks was that the yoga-like curving of the body is a practice of the male (show-offs). I'd assumed the sex already because the female is bigger all round.
Moths got a good look-in, too, among cards and other presents - below - but not on my cake. That was designed by my most excellent granddaughter to include two of my other enthusiasms - the Eggbots which feature in an episode of The Clangers on children's TV , and cress, whose peppery taste I love and whose absence from supermarkets, where mustard is sold absurdly as 'salad cress', is a minor national scandal.
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| Eggbot and cress cake - yum! |
2 comments:
What is an Egggbot?
Ah, ha! You are usually the one answering the questions. The Eggbots were a family of egg-shaped creatures which fitted inside one another like Russian matrioshka dolls and made single sounds - Doh! - according to the scale of the tonic sol-fa. They appeared in one episode of the children's TV series The Clangers when they landed on the Clangers' planet and the smallest one rolled down a hole and got stuck and was rescued by the Clangers. I learned about the Clangers more or less simultaneously as so oftens happens with sceientific discovery, eg Darwin and Wallace, through my small granddaughter and the Knit and Natter group in the pub here, one of whom was knitting a Clangers nativity.
There is also an artist's gadget called an Eggbot which you can read about here: http://egg-bot.com
How expert am I!
All v best as usual.
I now have to tick the box saying 'I'm not an Eggbot' sorry 'robot'
M
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