Hi everyone… last night I had a strange encounter with 2 different moths.
The Salle des Fetes windows and doors were open and the light was attracting all sorts of night-fliers.
One was brilliant yellow/white with lots of other colours. It was so pretty, that I thought it was an artificial decoration (from the wedding party last week). I went to put it away and it flew upwards and settled on my head. I moved gently towards the door and once outside, a friend wafted the moth up and away…
Nearer 2am… the last of us were all set to leave and I went to collect my wrap. Perched on it was a really large greyish/brownish moth with a thick multi-coloured body. It was not far off the length of my hand in its closed position. Darn nuisance not to have my camera. Anyway, that moth did not want to leave me. I did not want to damage it and took quite a while to gently coax it into the flowerbed…
As it opened its wings, it was possible to see the highly coloured body and also appreciate the size of its wings.
We have all sorts of night-fliers here, but the ones I saw last night were totally different from the usual visitors. One because of its bright colouring and the other because of its extra-large size… (I was thinking hawkmoth, but it was much bigger).
Anyway, have any of you had unexpected visitors these past few days ??
I’ve been scanning Google trying to match what we saw last night. I’ll keep looking…
Over the years, if we have had strong winds or strange weather, we do get visiting wildlife that we would not normally expect to see. This could be what happened yesterday.
I’ve been going through my books…the wings were charcoal grey, very long, with no particular markings… and I noted that the abdomen had yellow/orange rather than the pink markings that I have seen on the hawkmoths we normally get… I’ll keep looking…
Yes it was a Giant Peacock Moth, and because of the perspective (from my finger), it looks smaller to what it really was : giant. First and last time I had the chance to see one ! Could it be a Sphinx Stella ?
I once had one with on the wall outside, thought it was a bat flitting around until it settled. That was in the days before I had a digital camera, by the time I found my Kodak it had flown away.
Marvellous to see and really large, especially against a white wall. Isn’t nature wonderful ?
I see what you mean… except that the wings were so very plain in colour…
I’m almost wondering if this was an escapee from a “butterfly farm” or some such thing… we visited a place in the UK once and it was amazing to walk amongst these beauties…
We went to one good one in Vannes Stella, Babeth was there, with Her then, 7yr old Daughter previously, She is 17 now, and still, ‘phobic’ about fluttering insects.
or giant aerosol 
We see them often Ann, actually nice, watching them ‘floating/buzzing’ around, bit jealous really 