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Butterflies and Moths, Shown to the Children

Chapter 41: PLATE XVIII THE EYED HAWK MOTH (1 and 2)
By Theodore Wood
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About This Book

The book introduces children to common butterflies and moths, explaining their life cycle from egg through caterpillar, repeated molts, pupal stages in chrysalids or cocoons, and emergence as adults; it describes wing scales, the coiled proboscis used for feeding, and observable features that distinguish butterflies from moths such as antennal shape, body constriction, and resting wing posture. Short, accessible text accompanies forty-eight colored plates depicting adults and caterpillars with brief identification notes, and it offers practical tips on where to find eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalids and how to observe these insects safely.

PLATE XVIII

1. Eyed Hawk
2. Eyed Hawk Caterpillar

PLATE XVIII
THE EYED HAWK MOTH (1 and 2)

The “hawk moths” are so called because their flight is so swift and strong, very much like that of a hawk. Most of them come out soon after sunset on warm summer evenings, and you may often see them hovering in front of such flowers as honeysuckle, and verbenas, and petunias, with their long trunks poked deeply into the blossoms in order that they may suck up their sweet juices. But if you move in the very least they dart away at once, so quickly that you cannot even tell in which direction they have gone.

The Eyed Hawk is one of the most beautiful of these grand moths. You can easily see why its name was given to it, for the big spot on each of its hind-wings is very much like the “eyes” on a peacock’s tail. The caterpillar is pale green in colour, with a very rough skin, and with seven white stripes on each side of its body, and a curved blue horn upon its tail. You may often find it feeding on the leaves of apple trees in August and September. It then buries itself in the ground below, and changes to a shiny reddish-brown chrysalis, from which the moth makes its appearance early in the following June.