A Lovely Start

... to 2023. A story that gives a bit of hope for the future.

Sunday afternoon was warm, we went to the backyard and Mrs Ted jumped into the splash pool which is all we have set up for this year. When I came out she pointed at the wall of the house. "That's a Western Australian sized moth!" she said. 

And indeed, it was. We decided that moths in WA
were actually large sparrows. 

It was, as you can see, a big moth. Those are standard housebricks not mosaic tiles.

It was also not well. You can see that the shadow of the roof eave is above it, and the sun was heading downwards... It had obviously been caught short by the heat, and sat in what was then shadow, only to have the sun creep up over it.

While I watched, it basically let go so I put a piece of tree branch under it and caught it.

It latched on but was weak and barely managed to
hold on.

I wet my hand and let a few drops of water fall on the branch near it. Nothing seemed to happen.

I lifted the branch up onto the
foldout clothesline.

If it was going to die, it should have open skies above it.

But I hadn't given up yet. By this time a few clouds had slipped between us and the sun, it was later in the afternoon, and the moth was still there, so I mixed up a bit of sugar and water and put a few drops in front of it. We left it there and went inside. 

I waited another half hour and went outside, and noticed that it had some lift to the wings again and had now stretched its front legs out and gotten a better grip of the branch. 

Ten minutes later my wife went out to check on it and it was gone. It hadn't fallen down anywhere in the yard either. 

We had a moment of feeling happy that we'd given it at least one more flight, and hopefully a good many more. 

No idea what kind of moth it was, Mrs T thought it
might be a Bogong moth but I'm not so sure.

If anyone has an ID on this moth please contact me at Mastodon, there's a link in the footer just below here. And if you've also had a beautiful start to the year I'd love to hear it.

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Please Read Down Here Too.

I blog because I like to share. Things you can read about on my suite of blogs (which I'm the sole person creating, researching, writing, and publicising) range over topics like cyber-ethics (AI, sustainable energy, EVs) and 3D printing and recycling plastics and other waste streams, general tech and personal ramblings, environmental and ethical issues, rants about sustainable and eco-friendly tech and bad actors on those scenes, COVID news and opinion, even a recipe blog that has less chit-chat and more recipe..

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