Poplar Hawk Moth

We set up the moth trap last night and were very excited when we looked inside this morning. Best find was a Poplar Hawk moth; a beautiful big moth with a turned up tail, that holds it wings at a very unusual angle.

I'm going to try and do the BBC Springwatch challenge and post one photo a day for 100 days on their facebook page. This one of the Poplar Hawk Moths fuzzy face is my day 1 photo #100DaysOfNature.

We also found a Black Sexton Beetle, also sometimes called a Burying Beetle. A big black beetle with orange blobs at the end of it's antennae. Apparently they're the undertakers of the bug world and look for dead birds and mice. They dig holes underneath them, so the body falls into the hole, then lay their eggs and raise their young on the body.

It has a bit of a scary face, when it looks up

We also found some Forest Bugs (a type of shield bug) in the moth trap.

There were lots of other moths, including a couple that we hadn't caught before; a Drinker moth and a Poplar Grey.

Drinker moth

Poplar Grey