Sunday 2 August 2015

An Amazing Visitor


We've had plenty of visitors before, I've often shown them on our blog. For us it is one of the few reminders of how lovely it is to live here instead of the grey, rainy and cold Holland we left 18 years ago, it still somehow surprises us when we get such an exotic visitor in our own garden or home.


After research on the internet we found out that this is the Oleander hawk-moth (Daphnis nerii). Daphnis nerii is a large hawk-moth found in wide areas of Africa and Asia. It is a migratory species, flying to parts of eastern and southern Europe during the summer, particularly Turkey.
We had never seen one before and were delighted to see it.


It stayed on our terrace table for several hours until dusk, and it did not move at all while I was photographing it.


Nature's creatures are so very amazing, look at those colors, I would totally wear a dress in these colors and patterns :)


The adults feed on nectar of a great variety of flowers. They have a preference for fragrant species like petunia, jasmine and honeysuckle. They are especially active in the twilight time, hovering over the flowers after sunset. I guess that it is why it got in action when it turned dark.


In this map from Wikipedia you can see where these moths are, marked in blue is where they are in Summer, in green they are all year round, strange that we never have seen one before.

Maybe it was because of the Bluemoon :)


Unlike some information available on the internet, a bluemoon does not refer to the color of the moon but simply to the fact that it is the second full moon occurrence in the same month.

6 comments:

  1. Gorgeous! I love moths...I saw an elephant howk moth once...which was huge and beautiful. We're starting to see more "rare" bugs here since they stopped using weed killers on roads and public spaces.

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  2. That moth is so gorgeous!
    I want to sculpt it in miniature :)

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  3. It looks so soft and velvety, beautiful creature...

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  4. Very beautiful! Seems it is wearing a velvet dress. This summer I saw again after a long time fireflies and dragonflies.

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