Subject: Migrants

From: Martin Honey <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 09:13:00 GMT

On the subject of migrating Lepidoptera:

Yesterday evening at about 17.20 I was leaving work through the Museum's
recently created wildlife garden (see http://www.nh.ac.uk/museum/wildlife)
when I was surprised to come across a specimen of Macroglossum stellatarum
(Linnaeus), the Humming-bird Hawk-moth flying around flowers growing in our
chalkland area. This immigrant species occurs in Britain in most years,
mainly between spring and autumn, but it is not that common an occurence in
London. Colin Plant (1993) in his book "Larger Moths of the London area"
only records some 150-200 examples during the period 1871 to 1990!

Just for the record, it was also only my second "British" example.

Martin

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Martin R. Honey, Collections Management (Lepidoptera), Department
of Entomology, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, LONDON,
SW7 5BD, Great Britain.
TELEPHONE: 0171 938 9338    International  +44 171 938 9338
FAX:       0171 938 8937    International  +44 171 938 8937
EMAIL:     [email-masked]
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