The jersey tiger moth is an outstandingly beautiful creature, with boldly-striped dark grey and white upperparts and bright scarlet, orange or yellow underwings spotted with black. It is an astonishing sight when flying, and still gorgeous when at rest. They have become really common here in the south-east over the last five years or so; I have seen several this summer and in fact one literally flew into my face when I was walking to work this morning. On my way home I found another one, shown here.
This evening I took the kids glowworm hunting at Cliffe Pools.
I also had high hopes of seeing a barn owl, as it was early dusk and I had seen one there before. The recent heatwave has died down and it was really a bit cool, although still humid. I though I may have left it a bit late in the season for glowworms, although they should still have been around. We searched for an hour though, without finding any, or any owls either. I drove off really slowly with the main light off and windows down, peering into the verges as I went, but still nothing. Then as we got away from the water, nearly back to the road, I gave up and turned the headlights back on. And then, suddenly, there were green glows down in the undergrowth, so I stopped the car and had a look. On the right is what you see if you take a photo of a glowworm with no flash! With flash though, the beetle appears in her full glory, although of course you can’t see the glow very well:
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Matt M (Sunday, 20 August 2017 09:37)
Amazing. Never seen picture of glow worm before. Not sure what I expected but she's beautiful.