Those Caterpillars

You know that Elephant Hawk-Moth caterpillar The Old Man do find on the path the other day?
Well he's getting good at this. Just found a fifth. On a path. Sometimes at the front of the house. Sometimes at the back. Five, I tell you.
Or else the same one be going round and round the house.

The Old Man Finds A Caterpillar

"I found a big caterpillar... I found a big caterpillar..."
"Where?"
"....I found a big caterpillar..."
"Where?"
"Here... Look."
"Whe-e-ere!"
"Outside the kitchen door..... Look..."



My word it be a big boy... sat there... disconsolate on the weedy concrete yard.
I can see a "face" at the front end - almost like a lizard's face. This is apparently what gives it's final moth phase its name of the Elephant Hawk-Moth.... not because of the size of the moth (silly me) but for this "snout" at the front.
Rightly or wrongly we do carry it away from the concrete (so ready to be stood on) and put it into the leaf-litterish undergrowth round the front hoping it would find a handy place to pupate.
Read the Guardian article by another man surprised in the undergrowth.

The Wish For A Moth

It's being wonderfully hot and we are given a cracking thunderstorm the other morning. Last night I do go to bed with the window a bit open because of the mugginess. Lie there listening to a recorded book for too long... not very sleepy. Suddenly aware of clatterings going on and look up to watch big blurry things (I got no spectacles on) flapping about the ceiling. Leap out of bed because I decide enough is enough. Put on glasses to discover I have... not moths as I had excitedly hoped... but three crane-flies dancing around the room. Takes me some time to find a method of getting them back out the window... during which time another one popped in to join the fun. Must be some mass emergence on the crane-fly front.

All in all I be thoroughly awake after all that dancing round the room at midnight. Seems like I didn't get back to sleep till after 3 a.m.... still disappointed that I do not get an exciting moth.

So....  I be tired this morning and grumpily go around the garden drawing back the mesh from my vegetable patch. (Necessary barrier against wind, rain, insects... maybe snails and slugs... and most importantly.... night-roaming cats who need to .... use the cats' bathroom that is my garden.) I have forgotten the cut-up T-shirt strips that I use to tie the mesh back for the day. I trudge back to the house and back down to the potato patch. And there it is....

... One huge moth. Like a piece of bark hanging on to the frame. He looks fresh and new and very big. I know it is a hawk moth but not sure which. I drag out The Old Man to get a look. He takes some pictures and is fairly impressed....But the reception temperature drops when I work out that it is as an Eyed Hawk Moth.

You see its caterpillars like to eat apple leaves if they can't get their preferred sallows and willows ... and the potato bed is down near the apple trees. It's not good to get between The Old Man and his beloved fruit crops.

Late afternoon now.... and the moth is where we left it... I'm going to have to leave that potato bed unmeshed tonight... Hope the moth decides to fly when it gets dark.

Moths Do Fly

We be proud of our Burnet moth "nursery" in the driveway.
I may have implied that I be not the tidiest of gardeners.
So this time of year sees the edges of the driveway covered in long grass, plantains, hawkweed.... and Bird's-foot Trefoil.

Have often seen the gaudy day-flying Burnet moths fluttering around here. And chrysalises too. This year for the first time I do spot caterpillars and do not realise till checking up that these are the Burnet caterpillars... and they are indeed munching away on the leaves of the trefoil plants.

I always have a soft spot for trefoil flowers. I also remember the Burnet moths flying on the cliff paths around Sennen in my youthy days in West Cornwall. Now I know that they are interdependent. And am glad I be a bit lazy in the tidy gardening department. The chrysalises are already hatching and tuning into the iridescent peacock and crimson moths.

Dreamlife: Moth and Mother

Well I never....

I's dreaming of a huge day-flying moth, brightly coloured. What is its name think I?

Everything is very sunny and bright colours. (Makes a change.)

I lean out of an upstairs window in a row of terraced houses. Across the street is all green grass - like a park or common ground...

I can hear a voice coming from the house down there at the end of the row. It's the voice of my long dead mother.... tellin' someone off.

Hello Mum!

An Elephant in the Hand

So yesterday afternoon I get Mrs Doonuthin to cut the grass. It being sunny and dry and The Old Man agrees that it needs cuttin... as he himself sets out to go shoppin.

And...well... anything to kick Mrs Doonuthin out of her wine-sodden torpor really; mooning about makin' puppets that never quite get into animations....

Well I certainly don't get into any animations.

Fortunately, Mrs Doonuthin is more sober than usual, and be wearin' her spectacles, so that she spots this huge thing and rescues it out the grass... and I take its photo.

So. Yes. That aged hand is indeed the hand of Mrs Doonuthin, in case you wonder.

And that huge flying thing be an Elephant Hawk-Moth.

It have strange, large, opaque-looking green eyes.
And I reckon it have been around quite a while judging from its almost transparent wings and rather faded colours.

Bit like Mrs Doonuthin herself really.

I mean, when you consider that the moth does in fact have a few holes in its wings and a splodge of snail trail.... I reckon they make a good pair - the Moth and Mrs Doonuthin.