Fancy a date?

It's March 28th 2017...no, I know it isn't now! But, it was when I was writing this, which is now, if you follow my drift? Let's move on shall we, I never did like dates anyhow-they remind me of childhood Christmas'. Anybody else recall these?

Just me then! 

Definitely time to move on, as somebody once said, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." And so let me start another beginning, lest it becomes an end before I have even begun. As I was trying to say, before I added more waffle than an over stocked crêperie; on the 28th day of March, another of my Lime Hawk-moths eclosed. I wasn't around to see the early stages, because, as often happens, it must have begun overnight. But here are the photos I did manage to get...

Click on any photo for a larger view

Fairly soon after emerging, you can see the wings are still folded together

and from another angle

Looking at the curve, and shape of the abdomen, together with the larger antennae, I am pretty sure this is a male...

Such a furry face...

Finally the wings opened to reveal its full beauty

and an outdoor shot before I released it

Luckily, the weather has been reasonable over the past few days and the forecast is good, and so I felt much better about letting this one go. It sat on my Japonica plant for about an hour or so, then slowly began exercising it's wings before taking flight for the very first time...

Or to quote Winston Churchill:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The Silence of the Lambs part ll......

This post begins with good news and bad news.

The good news is that one of my Death's-head Hawkmoths has unexpectedly emerged. The bad news is that  one of my Death's-head Hawkmoths has unexpectedly emerged.

If you find that confusing, then let me further befog the issue by adding that even since I typed those words, a second has now also emerged.

Why am I saying that the good news is also the bad news? Well because I only had four pupae and these two have now emerged and seem to be both female? Certainly the same sex anyhow. That means no chance of mating and egg laying. Furthermore, I now have just two chances left for a pairing and those have to be one of each! (Unless I know less than I thought about mother nature?) I am fairly sure that it is too late for the last two to emerge as moths this year now (yes, I know I said that once before) and so I will have to cross everything and wait the winter out.

And a closer look at that fantastic mask-the markings on the two moths are very similar to each other...

Knowing that these moths feed on honey directly from the hive I knew it might be challenging to get them to feed in an unnatural environment. I had read and seen videos of how you need to encourage at least the first feed, by gently unfurling the proboscis and placing it in the honey.

I tried everything I knew for days on end to encourage feeding with no luck. I then e.mailed a friend who'd raised some already and asked for advice/tips, but she informed me that she'd had no luck with all five of hers and never did get them to feed. I tried different mixtures ranging from neat honey to honey and water and even sugar water but it was all refused. Then on the seventh day after emerging, I finally persuaded the first moth to have a feed by soaking some cotton buds in honey...

Please remember that you will need to view the blog online to see these videos-they do not show in the e.mailed version

                     

     

These really are beautiful and impressive moths with quite powerful, large wings. In this little clip I allow the wing to beat against my finger to show the sound it makes. It then decides on a maiden flight around my studio. You can hear it squeaking and bumping into the light and is way faster than I can follow with the camera, before settling once again. I apologise for my rather hairy hand here too-I am not a particularly hairy person but for some reason my right hand seems so in this clip! Must have drunk too much potion last night?

                 

       

You can hear the squeaking noises they make better in this clip where I am encouraging it by gently moving the moth. It also displays the defensive posture of raising itself up. They achieve the noise by expelling air from their proboscis (the part that looks like a long nose), past a flap near the opening called the epipharynx.They make the sound when startled, but also do quite a lot of squeaking when conducting their honey raids.

      

          

And so all things being equal, that is where this update should have ended. Sans to say perhaps that I have learnt so much from being able to observe  these monster moths. I should also mention I suppose  that they are now in a roomy flight cage and are fed and warm.

But...time has been tight of late and this update has taken a while to compile. Today October 5th turned into a very warm day for the time of year and I guess the remaining two pupae thought it must be spring and low and behold, they too have now emerged within a few hours of each other!

Emerging Death's-head Hawkmoth

Emerging Death's-head Hawkmoth

This one was last to emerge-this was about 15 mins later

I think the first photos show a male emerging? That's what I hope anyhow, with the final one being yet another female. I am not too sure about the last one as you can see the wings have yet to inflate fully (this can take about an hour) and the antenna are still folded down making it tricky to tell if they are the larger ones sported by the males.

And so now I have two that have fed okay and two to yet persuade to do so. Hopefully it will get easier with each one.

Once they are fed and ready I shall put these into the flight cage with the others, plus some food-plant and hope for a pairing. 

Watch this space because there could be more to add to the story yet.

Until the next time...

           

Style,grace and class.....Not!

Phew! Finally made it back here to update. Life gets in the way sometimes...so unfair!

At the closing of my last update I hinted that I'd been lucky enough to witness another 'first' regards invertebrates moulting. This time it was, well let me show you a photograph, maybe you will recognise the individual?

Click any photo for a larger view

A bit unfair I suppose because it is kinda contorted here as it struggles to free itself from the exoskeleton, but it is actually a speckled bush cricket...

I guess I watched for around 15 minutes and it still wasn't completely free of its old 'skin'...so vulnerable for such a long time.

Back in June whilst visiting Blean Woods near Canterbury, I spotted what I thought were emperor moth eggs-the only doubt in my mind came from the fact that they were on grass and I know that bramble is the main food-plant for emperors...

I took a few home to observe and meantime had another look at emperor eggs to see if these were a match...

I found these on the internet and they look a good match to me.

The only thing to do was to wait for the caterpillars to emerge, offer them both grass and bramble and see which they preferred?

It was quite a wait! Like a pregnant father I paced up and down for the next 15 days-slightly melodramatic? Possibly, but I had started to think that nothing was ever going to happen. But then...

Hmmm...looking very like emperor caterpillars aside from being a tad more hairy, or possibly just that the hairs seem a bit long? Once they'd demolished the shells, I added fresh bramble and grass and waited...

I guess you'd call the result inconclusive! Some headed for the grass, others the bramble and each tucked into their chosen meal. Perhaps the first moult would prove conclusive?

Well certainly with that orange banding starting to appear, they are looking less emperor-like, but what could they be?

They continued to feed and grow well and by the time of their last moult I finally realised that what I had were not emperor moth caterpillars at all but fox moth.

A new one on me, I hadn't seen either the moth or larvae before but they are impressive caterpillars, being about equal in proportion, but slightly slimmer, than the emperors...

The amount of butterflies and caterpillars I have been sighting has definitely increased dramatically of late, after what has been another poor year to date, at least locally. On a wander around farmland the other day, I saw these small tortoiseshell caterpillars...

By the way, as they approach pupating, caterpillars increase their intake quite markedly and here's a little video of one of my poplar hawk moth cats doing just that. This is real time..it's also a bit shaky as it was hand-held by...my shaky hand...

Just a reminder that this won't show in the e.mailed version of my blog

Now as often happens, I have been preoccupied with leafhoppers of late, just because I found an interesting one whilst looking for something else and that started me searching for more...and more...and...well, you get the picture? And if you haven't got the picture yet-here it is...

I couldn't offer an identity for this tiny nymph but, it's kind of cute, especially so when you consider the next photo...

I had to get the macro lens on this one as they are so small, I suppose it was about 3mm or so but once I had,I could see the huge hole in its abdomen, or perhaps more accurately, where its abdomen had been?

 Gruesome enough, but then...I was sure I could see movement inside! I waited a while and checked again-holy smoke! (apologies for all the exclamation marks) There was something and like a scene from Alien, it began to emerge (Don't use another exclamation mark John....don't...don't...just don't!.........Bugger!) What crawled out of the hopper was this...

What is it? No idea would be the closest I could get at present. It sort of looks like a dayglo hoverfly larva but, as 80's songstress Toyah once sang...'It's a mystery' for now at least.

Vying for the title of brightest addition to this blog update is this next little hopper nymph...

At least I can i.d. this one though; it's a rhododendron hopper. They turn this bright yellow colour at about the third moult, having previously been off white...

The adult is quite colourful too...

Erm...this is a bit out of sync should have added it when I was talking about parasites but anyhow; is this perhaps another, or even the same type of parasite still inside a hopper?

I may be at risk of repeating myself here but this kind of thing is what keeps me so interested and enthralled by nature. This year is the first time I have found/seen anything like this and each year brings something new. As somebody once said...'No man can be truly called an entomologist, the subject is too vast', or something similar to those words and the point is that there will always be a surprise around the corner as long as I keep looking.

Now...what this entry needs to really complete it with style, grace and class is a picture of some caterpillar poo...

You'll thank me one day you know? The next time you're at a dinner party and the conversation turns to invertebrate feces, you will be without doubt the only guest who can offer to identify caterpillar poo. Just to ensure that should that fact not be sufficient for folks to think you're some kind of oracle, you could quickly add that the poop of the alder moth (for that's what this is) is....groovy! 


Until the next time...

Butterflies and The Bard.....

Just back from a week in Oxfordshire and whilst there I managed to find time to cross the border into Warwickshire and pay a visit to the Butterfly Farm at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Billed as 'The UK's largest tropical butterfly paradise' and located on the south bank of the river Avon,opposite the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, I had read about it and was keen to take a look for myself.

Even after preparing my camera for the humid conditions by sealing inside a plastic bag, it was still around 20 minutes before it had settled enough to allow me to take any pictures:Very hot and humid inside there. 

However, once I'd sorted that, there were subjects a'plenty to photograph and aside from the constant,but expected interruptions caused by the numerous parties of schoolchildren being ushered around, at what seemed to be every 15 minutes,I was in butterfly heaven.

I didn't find photographing some of these insects at all easy using just natural light indoors but even though it would have been possible, I really didn't feel I wanted to add flash.

It was also a little challenging to get anything other than distracting backgrounds. There was lots of rich vegetation and not much space between planting. I suppose I had around 90 minutes at the farm and could easily have spent all day getting the shots I wanted but there were other things to do that day and anyhow, I was already starting to flag in the heat.

I have to add that having said how I struggled with getting the photos I wanted, I met a Frenchwoman with a little 'Ixus' camera that she described as 'cheap but very good' and was impressed by both how close it allowed her to focus (I think from memory she said something like, less than 25mm) and then how great her photos looked onscreen.

Tree Nymph Butterfly

I wish I could provide identities for all of these wonderful insects but I am unable to do that without extensive research and try as I might, I could find no relative information at the farm. 

Blue Morpho Butterfly

This selection illustrated here is but a tiny proportion of the total I could have photographed and as well as the insects there were plenty of caterpillars too...

Then I found some eggs to add to my haul. I think these may well be moth rather than butterfly...

Actually,looking at them again here,I'm not even sure they are viable. They do seem to be a bit messy.

In the caterpillar room, by the way that's not where I found mine, those were on the foliage inside the main dome with the butterflies, I had a go at photographing some pupae. These were all either behind glass or netting...

Again,I'm almost ashamed to admit it but I have no idea which insect these pupae represent but some of the most spectacular ones I have ever seen were these golden ones...

And so a visit to the butterfly farm was a terrific way to spend some time and I will certainly be returning sometime soon. There is also an 'Insect City' with stick insects, beetles, leaf-cutting ants, as well as millipedes,snails and crabs in the mini-beast section that I didn't even manage time to visit this time.

I was however struck by the amount of butterflies,in fact,almost all that I photographed, that showed signs of damaged/tatty wings. I thought about it a lot and decided to e.mail the farm for an explanation;asking if this is common in the wild or something related to how they are kept indoors. I have as yet not had a reply but will publish it here should I get an answer from them.

Until the next time then...

More information on the butterfly farm....HERE