Garden Visitors

[Jenny]

Being so close to open fields and a river, we often get some unusual insects dropping into our garden.
Hover flies and bees and butterflies are constant visitors, but some days we get dragon flies and damsel flies; and today we had this little lovely

A Red Admiral Butterfly, and we sometimes get Peacocks too

This hover fly posed nicely while I took its photo ;D

[TenebrousNova]

Very nice photos, Jenant.

I remember finding four Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillars in my garden at one point, and I did keep them until adulthood. They were huge, and had these nice eye like markings on their heads.

Caterpillars were like this:



Adults look like this:



I found it extremely unusual that we had them in our garden, because you normally find them out in the countryside. Nevertheless, they looked very well fed when I found mine.
They made a huge amount of mess within a short time.

Well, I've never found this moth, in adult or larval form, ever since.

[Wood~Ant]

And of course we get insect pests on our plants, even if they do provide food for the local ants