Tuesday 5 August 2008

The Wild and Wonderful


This wonderful caterpillar was discovered by Sue on the jasmine plant just outside the house in France. Max snapped the pic and we all went to the Natural History Museum the following week in London.
The lady in the 'Discovery' section was very polite and knowledgeable...and we were very excited that we might have discovered something amazing!
However she took all of 3 seconds to anounce that it is an Oak Hawk Moth......to be.
Sometimes 4 inches can be very exciting!

2 comments:

Rajiv Ayyangar said...

Wow! I was tucking vines at a vineyard in the Santa Clara AVA, California, and I found something very similar! Four inches long, thick as my thumb, grape-vine green, and one end was strangely foaming. The other workers dared me to eat it, but ultimately we hurled it far over the fence.

HamishWM said...

Yes. It was quite a shock. Our vineyard is about 200 metres from the house and we always find weird things in there hopping about. We do not spray or do any heavy treatments so we do seem to attract some weird and wonderful creatures. We have loads of wild boar that live in the bush near the vines....but they are very secretive.....But they taste great with a decent Syrah!