Saturday, July 03, 2010

Elephants run amok in the garden

Elephant Hawkmoth
Say hello to an Elephant Hawkmoth. They are very friendly, docile beasts. What an amazing colour scheme too.

Burnished Brass
Much smaller and more understated but no less attractive - this is a Burnished Brass. When I took it into the sunshine to photograph, I suddenly realised just how shiny and metallic they are - as if they have gold leaf on their wings. Amazing!

Privet Hawkmoths
Not so many Privet Hawkmoths as the previous catch, but this time I arranged some of them on the wall for a group photo. You can see the pink stripy body on the right-hand one.

And, for any moth nerds reading, here's the list of ones we did identify. There are some more photos on Flickr of the ones I haven't dared put a name to. Your help to ID them would be most appreciated!

In numerical order:


  • Dark Arches, 94!
  • Common Wainscot, 16
  • Heart & Dart, 16
  • Buff Arches, 11
  • Privet Hawkmoth, 9
  • Setaceous Hebrew Character, 9
  • Common Footman, 8
  • Elephant Hawkmoth, 7
  • Light Arches, 6
  • Willow Beauty, 4
  • Large Yellow Underwing, 3
  • Mother of Pearl, 3
  • Peppered Moth, 3
  • The Clay, 3
  • Figure of Eighty, 2
  • Flame-shoulder, 2
And one each of these:
  • Beautiful Hook-tip
  • Brimstone, 1
  • Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing
  • Double Square-spot
  • Ghost Moth
  • Least Carpet
  • Lesser Swallow Prominent
  • Poplar Grey (I think)
  • Silver Y
  • Swallow-tailed Moth
photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

3 comments:

  1. Great stuff Katie, the Elephant Hawkmoth is a beauty.

    Could you kindly remind me whether or not you OK'd my putting your photographs on Birds2blog please....short memory you understand!

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  2. Great shots Katie - my Burnished Brass flew off before i could photograph it :-o

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  3. @Pete, yes that's fine

    @YvonneB, hope you manage to catch another one. Been getting them regularly here, one or two each catch

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