The Buff-tip moth has evolved to resemble a snapped off Silver Birch twig and so the moth, on finding a stick, will embrace it and stay very still in the hope that nobody notices it... #teamMoth#mothsMatter
You're a bird, flying in looking for tasty morsels in the shrubbery. Ooh, what's that, something fluttered by and landed? You investigate...sheeeyit there's a sharp-eyed mammal staring back at you!
If you're wondering why I've posted the moth upside down...think about what angle a bird might first catch a glimpse, it's not necessarily the right way up! If agitated this species will expose a second pair of eyes on its hindwings
The details and the subtlety of the "eyes", formally known as ocelli, are quite astonishing when you think about it. They have "irises" and "catchlights" to make them look like real eyes and from this angle eyebrows and a nose below!!!
@SteelFolk Ah, interesting. I assumed there'd be something. Because these surfaces are photonic, the brighter areas will actually glisten and shimmer in sunlight so making them look shiny like real eyes, amazing evolution!
Something else to mention. Those enormous feathered antennae are present only on the day-flying males. The largely nocturnal females don't need them. They are there mainly to pick up her sex-attractant pheromone and can detect a few molecules on the wind from up to about ten miles away. The males can then follow the trail to its source and have a good time.
@kwirirayi I'll try and find it for you. I wonder whether there's some issue about evidence regarding maturity being later that some people would want to stop teens being able to make important decisions...
I think the debunking was basically saying that just because the brain is still developing until mid-20s, it doesn't mean that younger people are somehow limited in their ability to make sensible and rational decisions.
The Hobbies are back from the African wintering grounds. This one was way up high so a very cropped photo.
The Hobby is a falcon that sits between the Peregrine and the Kestrel in size and is very similar to each in some ways. I've photographed them taking and eating dragonflies on the wing, but have also witnessed them taking Swift.
Falco subbuteo, which means a falcon "less than", so smaller, than a buzzard (Common Buzzard is Buteo buteo).
I say this every year, but the subbuteo bit is where the table footie game gets its name. The inventor wanted to call it "Hobby", but the manufacturers would have none of it, so he sneakily called it Hobby anyway, by using the species component of the bird's scientific binomial.