Sunday September 19th : A Friend, Dave Wagstaff, works as a manager at Burnham Co-op. On Saturday a staff member, who lives at Steeple, came out of her house to drive to work and found a large moth clinging to the side wall of one of her car tyres. Instead of removing it she left it there and proceeded to drive to Burnham, reaching 50-60 mph on occasion during the eight mile journey. Remarkably, when she arrived at the Co-op it was still there! Dave identified it as a female Convolvulus Hawk Moth (pictured), a long distance migrant from Southern Europe that can occasionally be seen in late autumn nectaring at fuchsia or tobacco plant blossom in gardens. Another friend, Bob Pease, a car designer (who took the picture) has set himself the task of working out the number of revolutions per minute the moth must have experienced during the twenty minute journey, assuming that the average speed was 35mph. A great manyI would surmise! Dave brought the moth to Bradwell Bird Obs on Sunday morning, where the photo was taken, and it was released unharmed - albeit with its head still in a spin - that evening.
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The weblog below is for naturalists to use to report interesting sightings, ask questions, report on field meetings and generally post pictures and any information or questions generally relevant in some way to the wildlife and geology of Essex. You will need to register and be logged-on to post to the forum, and you need to upload pictures first, for use in posts. Find out more
The weblog below is for naturalists to use to report interesting sightings, ask questions, report on field meetings and generally post pictures and any information or questions generally relevant in some way to the wildlife and geology of Essex. You will need to register and be logged-on to post to the forum, and you need to upload pictures first, for use in posts. Find out more