What an excitement! Shaun is visiting Mareja, he is an amateur but very expert lepidopterist with a particular interest in hawkmoths. He does a day/night job as a fireman and spends spare time collecting and developing his specialism. He saw an advert I placed in the oxford natural history museum for researchers, keen to develop our biodiversity inventory. Well he went for two weeks with light-traps, pins and boxes in hand.
Coming out of the dry season and being on the edge of the rains we were not sure what sort of life would emerge for him into his light-traps. Anyway all in all it seems to have been a successful trip and my fear that Dominik would divert Shaun with other jobs, noticing his practical capable ways - was slightly realised. (D using his new phone sent me photos of Shaun helping him to prop up a huge crumbling column in the main house.) But imagine my delight when one evening I get a phonecall, in fact the night before Shaun left - and I hear shrieking in the background. Soon the sound is married with a picture. Look at this beauty! A
death's-head hawkmoth, with the extraordinary skull marking, who when alarmed admits a high-pitched call.
(We have had really poor comms in Mareja until recently and it has been markedly improved by a new service provider and Dominik's propulsion into new technology with an iphone type ...I must add 'type' as our frugal approach meant that he got an imitation lower grade make, which unsurprisingly doesn't work that well.)
No comments:
Post a Comment