Poplar Trio

 

It's easy to become blasé about very familiar moths so I'm glad to pay respect today to one of the most faithful of them all, the good old Poplar Hawk Three of them arrived in the trap on Saturday night and posed willingly on one of our apple trees, Come 9pm, they were still there.

My third picture shows how I left them though they were gone this morning. A pair were in the trap today, perhaps two of the trio, along with a couple of rather worn Elephant Hawks. These two species have been consistent all Summer so far but in other respects it is turning out to be a meagre year. No Lime, Pine, Small Elephant or Hummingbird Hawks so far; and less surprisingly, no return of the Broad-bordered Bee Hawk which paid a solitary call in 2020.

The hawks are also long-standing favourites because of their willingness to perch on my fingers, as shown here from yesterday, and on the rather more elegant ones of my grandchildren. They are tickly but do no harm.

The relative shortage of hawk moths reflects a wider feeling this year that numbers are well down, which was reflected at supper the other evening when our hosts talked wistfully about past Summer evenings when the windows were left open late into the evening as the lights came on in their house, an moths invaded. Luckily, the supper was graced by the presence of a Dingy Footman ab stramineola - pic below - and a cricket which got entangled in another guest's hair.

The eggboxes meanwhile furnished this Mother-of-Pearl micro in an unusual resting position with its wings furled back rather than wide open, a very clearly marked Common or Lesser Common Rustic and one of the yellow underwings.

Less happily, a clutch of Large White butterfly eggs like the one I featured a few posts ago has turned into this colony of small but extremely voracious caterpillars which I have shifted over a wall. Also in the butterfly world, my last set of photos shows a Holly Blue with good taste which I nearly trod on while walking the canal towpath.