Immature Hawks.

I have often looked for, and generally failed to find Hawk-moth larva with only the Elephant Hawk in my collection so it was with enormous pleasure to see an Eyed Hawk-moth larva when I was on a walk with Nigel a couple of weeks ago. This larva was on a small Sallow bush by a stream. I had spotted that lots of leaves were missing and had obviously been eaten by a large larva, but it was Nigel that first spotted the large larva hiding. While we were photographing it the larva was relaxed enough to carry on feeding.

Eyed Hawk-moth looking for more leaves.

Eyed Hawk-moth feeding.

Today Nigel was not able to join me for our usual Wednesday walk so following the previous success I decided to try and find more Hawk-moth larva in Friston Forest, an area where Nigel and I have failed over the past 2 years, although Nigel has found some here in the past. In the first Sallow tree I searched I found 2 Pebble Prominent larva. These strange looking larva had eaten large areas of the leaves so I was confident of finding some kind of larva.

Pebble Prominent larva.

After seeing these two I carried on hunting when I suddenly spotted a superb Poplar Hawk-moth larva. These larva are bright green and it is amazing how well they are hidden when on the tree. After photographing it and looked in another part of the tree I tried to find it again and just could not find it despite a thorough search. I still can't believe I couldn't find it again. I then carried on searching other trees but failed to find anything else.

Poplar Hawk-moth larva.

Poplar Hawk-moth.

This was my last view of the Poplar Hawk-moth larva resting under a leaf.

Another little project I have going at the moment is trying to get some more Hummingbird Hawk-moth action shots. I've had a couple of these wonderful moths visiting the garden over the past couple of weeks and I've tried to come up with a few ideas of getting better photos of them. Unfortunately the weather has not been kind so if it improves soon I may be able to do better than this effort.

Hummingbird Hawk-moth.