Oh deer, I didn't find any beatles....

It was November 25th of 2013 when I last visited Knole Park in Sevenoaks and so last week, I went again. This time I used the main entrance and so had to wait until 10.15am for the gates to open. There were plenty of deer around though, even close to the house itself...

I even found a big stag this time and was delighted to see it was a white one...

What an impressive beast this one is and I love the rufous colour of his antlers...

If you look closely, you can see that he's been fighting recently. Probably challenging another stag for domination of the harem...

I took an unhealthy amount of pictures of this big boy but, just couldn't stop myself-here's one of me stalking him...

Then I spotted a real cute youngster...

This is the kind of habitat that the deer are free to roam around in at Knole...

Didn't get time to look around the house but ventured into one of the courtyards, where I saw this large sculpture-I tried my best to preserve his modesty with a sunbeam, but didn't quite manage it...

There were lots of noisy jackdaws hanging around the grounds and so I thought I'd have a bash at photographing a couple of those as well...

That was my day at Knole with the deer, but now I have some news about the Death's Head Hawk-moths. I have to report that they have all passed away now but I did manage to keep them for around 6 weeks, I think it was. They are not long-lived moths and the longest I have read of anyone ever keeping them is 9 weeks, with most at less than a month. Anyhow, I decided one morning to clean out the flight cage they had been housed in and was shocked to find on closer inspection, they had left me a present of around 30 eggs!

I had given up on the moths mating and had stopped inspecting for any signs of ova and so this was a treat to find....

I have removed them to a container and they are currently in the bottom of the airing cupboard for warmth. Having researched as much as I could,the advice seems to be that it is better to allow/encourage them to emerge and then grow them on as larvae until they pupate, and then overwinter as pupae. The food plant of privet is evergreen and so is still available for them. 

I have no idea whether they will be viable and apparently the time as eggs is variable depending on temperature, but is always fairly short.

I read that the average is about 4 days but I seem to remember the first batch I had took seven.

I will let you know if I do get lucky and have more caterpillars-last time I only had 4 emerge from 15 ova but as I have about double that number this time, you never know.

I will leave you with this drawing as a way of explaining a comment on my last blog update; you may recall reading a very nice comment about my close-up shot of the moth 'claws'? Which said something like 'A stonking tarsi close-up'..I wondered if some folks may not be aux fait with the term 'tarsi' (tarsus) and so this should help..

AS for any American, or overseas readers in general...you might have to Google 'stonking'? 

Until the next time...