Cromarty Archive

Humungous Poplar Hawk Moth on doorway at the Emporium

Humungous Poplar Hawk Moth on doorway at the Emporium

Date Added: 25 June 2010 Contributor: Colin Dunn Year: 2010 Picture No: 2686

Eddie the window-cleaner, who is currently repainting the front of the Emporium, pointed this out to me as I was passing. This moth was easily 6cm wide - slightly creepily large. I've never seen one of these in Cromarty before, but Viv reckons it's an Elephant Hawk Moth. Any moth experts out there? Can you confirm? Eddie moved it to the back garden at the Emporium.

[Updated: Confirmed as Poplar Hawk Moth.]

Albums: Wildlife

4 Comments

I've had a look around online, and think this must be a Poplar Hawk-moth Laothoe populi. (see http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?id=28)

According to that site, it's 'Probably the commonest of our hawk-moths', though I've certainly not seen one in the town before.
Comment left on 25 June 2010 at 09:34 by Colin (Editor)
I can confirm that it's a poplar hawk. I've run a moth trap every day as part of a UK monitoring scheme for about 30 years and each year at about this time the poplar hawk appears in small numbers. The first one for this year was in today's catch. They're remarkably consistent but the idea of the scheme is that it will pick up any variations throughout the UK and will be particularly interesting in view of climate change and other long term cycles. Comment left on 25 June 2010 at 19:55 by Peter Tilbrook
Thanks Peter. Title updated now. A humane trap I hope :} Comment left on 25 June 2010 at 22:44 by Colin (Editor)
It is a poplar hawk moth, though a very dark (melanistic) variation. Comment left on 04 September 2015 at 15:54 by Fred Topliffe
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