Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Sunday 21 June 2009

Mothing Memories

I'm not much of a moth twitcher, but over the years I have made a few out of county trips that have produced superb moths that we are unlikely to see (or would be extremely rare) in VC55. Up until now, with one or two exceptions, I've not made much effort to publish any shots from these trips. So - every now and then I'll upload one here for the memory. First up is topical after comments on John's Blog - this is a Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth. This was one of the prizes on a weekend trip down to Dorset with Keith Tailby. It was a blistering hot day and we'd already seen Broad-bordered Bee Hawk-moth at another site. After a couple of hours we'd got our eye in for these beauties zooming about, but really no chance of photography. Then on the way out of the site, we found a patch of milkwort where a couple of adults were nectaring in their typical hover and go style. Every now and then, one would sit on the flower for a few seconds giving a chance of getting a shot. Unfortunately I only got a shot of a slightly knackered one - but it was still bloody good!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Any of the Bee/Hummingbird type Hawk-moths are superb. You can watch them for ages really. Just brilliant.

Making plans for a Hampshire Dorset trip next year already.