The elephant in the room

Another spectacular finding in the moth trap on each of the last two trapping nights has been an Elephant Hawk-moth.

Although it looks good on the egg cartons in the moth trap I hoped for a few photos with a better background.  On a cool early morning the moth was happy to sit on my warm hands.

I brought it into the dining room for a brief photo shoot, first trying a paeony, Bowl of Beauty.

The moth found it a bit difficult to maintain a secure foothold so I tried a foxglove.

The moth was getting a bit bored by this stage and was revving up its flight muscles to get them warm.  You can see the wings are blurred even with the high-speed flash.

Eventually it flew off through the French doors to hide in the garden, perhaps by chance, or not, choosing a hiding place in the pink border with a matching pink and green background.

Here is a comparison between the Small Elephant Hawk-moth I caught a few weeks ago (L) and the Elephant Hawk-moth (R).  Not to scale as the small one is about 3/4 size.

Elephant Hawk-moths are fairly common and widespread.  They fly at dusk so I'll keep an eye on the viper's bugloss and see if I can spot one without using the light trap.