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

Tuesday, 12 July 2011

Monster Garden Tick

Delighted to find this nestling on an egg box this morning in the actinic combo trap - absolutely huge relative to everything else in there.

Privet Hawk-moth - awesome!

3 comments:

Broom Birder said...

Really interesting Mark, Privet Hawk is easily my commonest. Is it common in VC55 and just scarce in your immediate area?
In my garden so far this year-
Privet 17
Elephant 6
Lime 5
Poplar 5
Eyed 3
No Pine or Hummingbird yet this year and I've never had Small Elephant.....
M

Skev said...

It's one I've been expecting Matt. It has been increasing over the last few years in VC55, spreading west from Rutland through Leicestershire and now spreading out aswell.

Had my first Pine Hawk last year (none so far this year) but no Small Elephant so far. Also had one Humming-bird Hawk in 2006, but no other immigrant hawks.

None of the regular hawks are especially common around my garden, and only Poplar has ever appeared in double-figures in a season but it is very up and down (eg 32 in 2001, 28 last year, but only 3 in both 2004 and 2007).

Over the years:
Species, Recs, Inds, First, Last
Lime, 28, 29, 2000, 2011
Eyed, 31, 34, 2000, 2011
Poplar, 133, 173, 1999, 2011
Elephant, 47, 53, 2000, 2011

The Leicester Llama said...

I still need Privet for my garden on the east side of Leicester. Have a feeling that Adrian's had it though, and he's less than half a mile away from me, so there's always hope!