It seems to be a good year for moths but butterflies are in short supply again (apart from the ubiquitous cabbage white).
Last month something caught my eye and I got my first sighting of a cinnabar moth. Small, but rather pretty with its splashes of red. Then, more recently, a large striped beauty caught my eye. An internet search identified it as a Jersey Tiger moth. Well named, with its showy orange and black wings, striped in yellow. Two more appeared a few days later.
The third stranger I met with was one that turned up to visit my Phlox plants last week. It was most peculiar. I was about to describe it, as best as I could, to my daughter who lives forty miles from me and after getting as far as "It was really peculiar" she interrupted me with " Hummingbird moth?" It had to be. Small, fat, wings going so fast they were a blur, hovering over the phlox flower and probing for nectar with an immensely long proboscis, out of all proportion to the length of its body.
It seems she too had been visited and had done an internet search.
