A choosy Dame and some burst bubblewrap!

Saturday morning I rescued a rather worn looking, female Humming-bird Hawkmoth [Macroglossum stellatarum] Moro-Sphinx from the inside of the kitchen window.

This is one I took earlier.... 2006, actually!

Their larval foodplants are bedstraws....
here we have the biggest of the lot...
Goosegrass or Cleavers [Gallium aparine]Gaillet Gratteron.
I wish it wasn't so abundant....
it pulls my young trees over....
and then buries them completely...
so I released her where there was a patch that is unlikely to get the chop in the "foreseeable".

She immediately began to lay...
it was fascinating to watch...
I thought she was feeding at first....
but it dawned quite quickly that she was hovering mainly at the unopened tips.
She would hover up and down a tip...
decide it wasn't right, or too small...
then move to another.
If it was deemed suitable, she laid an egg...
by dabbing her tail against the underside of a leaf about two inches lower...
she chose nice fat tips...
presumably with plenty of growth to come.
I will keep an eye open on that patch....

On the subject of laying eggs, the daft Fox Moths have been at it again....
laying on the edge of the door frames....

Rather like little eyes... or perhaps humbugs?

and another, an Ubu moth [Unknown because unseen], laid a batch of eggs directly on the glass...

Little round marbles...

they seemed to be doing nothing and....
as they were in full sunlight...
I thought they'd probably cooked...
and then, just as Pauline and I were going out...
I noticed each one had a black dot....
"I'll photograph that later", thought I...
on our return...
they'd almost completely hatched out.

All hatched out....

These pix give some idea of the hatching out process...
some of them crawled away...
others abseiled down the three feet on home-spun silk!

...and almost all gone!!

Now all that is left is the burst bubblewrap!!

They were leaving silk trails before they left the vicinity of the egg mass!!

Things that go "BONK" in the night!

We've been amazed recently by things hitting the windows of an evening.... in this first post I'll concentrate on the moths [Papillons du Nuit].
The most exciting was a Giant Peacock Moth [Saturnia pyri] Grand-Paon-de-nuit which visited on the 11th... absolutely huge, it was at least 15cm [3"] across....

Now that's more my size of prey!

They don't normally have this sparkle, do they?

Hey, Mum... have you seen this!
The cat's heads and the Fox Moth give scale to this magnificent moth.

...it had the full attention of the cats... but was very difficult to photograph... it wouldn't stop flying around.
Most of the other moths have been far more sedentary... settling for long periods.
But it did eventually settle for a moment.... and I got a lovely shot of it on our step.

The step is 27cms left to right.

This male is at the North of its range... it is, like most of the Saturniidae born without mouthparts, so is on the way out the moment it emerges from the pupal case. The young feed on Blackthorn [Prunus spinosa] Epine Noire or Prunelle of which we have plenty, as well as Ash and various other trees.
I found the remains of another that had probably fed a bat, by the Mairie in Grand Pressigny - a full hindwing and a few shreds of the others. [27/05/12 - Also a front wing by our back door... the front rib of which is constructional strength steel.... by the feel of it. The colours of the two wings are much faded when compared with these pix, too.]

A second member of the Saturniidae that has been around is the Fox Moth [Macrothylacia rubi] Bombyx de la ronce... we get loads of these. They really are daft creatures... laying eggs on our doors like the Emperor Moth on our window [blogged about here  and one that Susan wrote about here]... the titchy caterpillars have to cross three metres of bare calcaire! An adult female can be seen in [above pic] which then went on to start laying much to the amazement of our RonRon as she had noticed a male that was still trying to mate... so she tried to separate them...

What's going on here?

That can't be right!
[the female is the lower one and the eggs are
the pale dots on the door frame beneath her.]

Better separate them then...?

fortunately there was glass in the way, as I think what she had on her mind was a bit more permanant than "Go away!" A mouth full of moth wing scales... yuck!

Another visitor was an Eyed Hawkmoth [Smerinthus ocellata] Sphinx Demi-Paon...

...we usually have our attention drawn to where the 'bonking' is coming from by the cats!!
This was no exception... RonRon the 'scientist' made a mad dash across the tops of the work surfaces to the kitchen window... before being told off... but by the time I'd managed to get the camera and get outside, it had moved to the lounge window... lower and more convenient for photography.

You can see here the eye is just visible...

Eyed Hawkmoth female.

This and the Poplar Hawkmoth have a strange wing profile.

and after taking a picture to show the upper wings better...
I risked holding the wings open to show the eyes more clearly....

Still not perfect, but I didn't want to damage her!

Surprisingly, she didn't object!!

As mentioned before, we get lots of 'night visitors' and here are a few more in no particular order!

Lunar Thorn or Purple Thorn moth [Selinia spp]

The same Lunar Thorn or Purple Thorn moth [Selinia spp],
a couple of ichneumon flies [Ophion luteus & Lissonota setosa] and a micromoth.

Ichneumon fly [Ophion luteus /Ophion sp.]

An Art Deco micromoth and some more night visitors including an ichneumon.

Moth in a smoking jacket!
Peach Blossom Moth [Thyatira batis] La Batis

The next night visitors post will be on beetles.... things that really go BONK on the glass, floor, lampshade, etc...etc...etc!