At Pett Level on Sunday 1st October I was enjoying a coffee with my partner at the Red Pig food truck in the layby near the pools, when something fluttered past in my peripheral vision. I knew it wasn’t a bird due to the erratic flight style and my first thought, given the size, was a bat! After a bit of manic fluttering around the benches it settled on the side of the truck and I could get a closer look: Convolvulus Hawk-moth!

I’m not sure the pictures do it justice but this is a very large moth (wingspan of over 10cm) and subtly beautiful too. It looked amazing against the vivid red paint of the truck. Despite having seen a caterpillar at nearby Pannel Valley NR on 30th July this year, I assume this moth is an immigrant rather than a local hatching. From the information I’ve been able to find online, the pupae aren’t able to survive British winters.

Not much info out there on the breeding populations from which our south coast immigrants of this species derive, although southern Europe and Africa are frequently mentioned. Incredible distances travelled by these seemingly fragile things. I’d imagine the breeding range is shifting north with the warming climate and records certainly seem to be increasing in Sussex.