Damien Enright: Caterpillar of elephant hawkmoth was a sight to see

The caterpillar of an elephant hawkmoth. After pupating for eight months, it will emerge as a gorgeous pink moth, 2.5 cm across, a night-feeder on the nectar within fuchsia and willowherb flowers.

Last week, barrowing loads of rosebay willowherb we had weeded from the garden to the pit where it will, in time, become useful compost, we came upon a black caterpillar as long and almost as round as my index finger.

It had fallen from the barrow of weeds onto flagstones and there laid prostrate before raising all but a centimetre of its body heaven-ward, like a worshipper about to cry ‘Hallelujah!’

With foreparts thus raised, it swayed like a short, fat snake, while conspicuous ‘false’ eyes, on either side of its head, appeared to survey the world around it. 

Then, as if coming to a decision, it lowered its fore parts and set off at a fast clip toward the edge of the flagstone podium.

Fearing it would wander off across the naked plain and be seized by a thieving magpie, a squawking jackdaw, a raiding scald crow or our garden heron itself, my son captured it, the better to protect it from an arrested development, an untimely, half-finished, end.

We knew what it was — the caterpillar of an elephant hawkmoth, a spectacular Irish lepidoptera species which, after cocooning as a larvae during the winter, emerges in May to take flight on new-made wings, a creature transformed from devilish, earthbound monster into an angelic, airborne nectar-feeding, moth, shocking-pink in colour with wings 2.5 inches (60 cm) across. A beauty indeed, a wondrous sight to see!

Appropriately, the colour may vary from pink willowherb to the scarlet of fuchsia, on the flowers of which the caterpillar, with its expandable elephant-trunk nose and sharp, scimitar-shaped hook sticking skyward at its tail, feeds voraciously until the finger-fat body fills sufficiently to sustain it during its winter sleep.

It was sensible to save it. Magpies flit across the yard, jackdaws swoop , grey crows arrive from the nearby fields trying to steal the heron’s fish or chicken bones.

Meanwhile, the heron will eat anything that crawls and cruel cats would not be adverse to using a fat caterpillar as a plaything.

Now, having rescued it, the question arose of where to put it. The willowherb mini-forest that had greeted us on our return from prolonged lockdown in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, were all plucked or shorn, while the fuchsia hedges are the hang-out of cats that use them for cover as they wait for fledgling blue tits, great tits, coal tits , robins, sparrows, chaffinches or wrens to set out from their sheltering nest for the first time. 

Delaying the decision of where to put it until next morning, we lodged it overnight in a vivarium, freshly furnished with earth, dead leaves and bark, with fresh fuchsia leave and flowers for fodder. 

In the morning, we found that it had pupated, this evident by the appearance of a nest of leaves and debris bound together with silk threads. We will leave the open vivarium in a place safe from predators and, when the moth emerges it will fly free.

Perhaps, in late spring, we can find it by the light of a flashlight or the moon drinking nectar with its long tongue from the heart of the nearby fuchsia flowers.

The garden, at this time of year, is full of juveniles, easy to distinguish from their parents by their muted plumage, protective colouration to help them survive the learning months before they become alert to dangers and can recognise dangerous territory, and learn to avoid both.

Yesterday evening, a juvenile chaffinch so companionable that it is all but underfoot when we’re outdoors, arrived inside the house when we were having dinner.

It had found its way through an open downstairs door and up the stairs to the living room. It hunkered down on the floor when my son approached it, caught it and carried it across the room to release it through a French window.

Apparently unfazed by contact with the human species, it would, I think, again fly into the house through an open window if it saw us sitting around the dining table.

What a lovely, innocent little bird – it seems to believe we’re its surrogate parents. It would be most welcome around the garden, a fitting complement to the heron, reaching less than half the way up to its knees.

Whales have been spouting, surfacing, breaching and possibly lobtailing (slapping the sea with their tails) at the head of Courtmacsherry Bay. Aboard Mark Gannon’s whale-watching excursions, visitors are excited, charmed and overwhelmed by sightings of humpbacks breaching nearby and fin whales, up to 20m long, surfacing alongside.

Humpbacks and sperm whales are the great jumpers of the cetacean tribe. Breaching, they sometimes all but stand on their tails, and even pirouette when savouring the fresh air.