Pretty Monster Moth

I work in a garden office, and this evening had the door open because it was quite warm and incredibly humid.

This chap flew in at about half past ten, attracted by the light, and buzzed around noisily before settling on the side of one of my picking baskets.

By English standards he's huge; about 6cm from nose to tail. He's also utterly beautiful. Most of his fur is mid brown, but the bright pink fur is natural, not a reflection from the basket.

With a bit of help from Google, I worked out that he's an elephant hawk-moth. The butterfly-conservation.org website mentions that they particularly feed off the nectar from Enchanter's Nightshade. We've got plenty of that in our garden ! It's a relative of Deadly Nightshade, a kind of "Not Quite As Deadly But You Still Wouldn't Want To Eat Any" Nightshade.

Although I took a bunch more photos, most of them are blurry because the light wasn't great, and my main focus was on taking him out and persuading him to let go of the basket so he could fly away safely.

For the best experience view this post on Liketu