Strange Insects

It seems there's some strange insects around my house - I've just seen one of these fiddling with my honeysuckle (!):

And there was one of these in my kitchen recently:

It freaked my dogs out - twas nearly 8" long, with a sting-like thing on the tail...

 

8" - are you sure you don't mean 8cm? If you do mean 8" then that makes the body at least 1" in diameter at a rough guess which is a way bigger than any caterpillar I've ever heard of. It also makes that a bloody fat branch....

Michael.

 

Cracking pictures though!

 

Indeed.

 

Good find - great photos. I believe that the technical term for the first creature is 'moth'. The second creature is a 'Galloway slug'. The spike on its back is for show only and your dogs are wusses.

 

According to Auntie Ants (she knows such things) - the big fat caterpillar is an Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar . The "eyes" and the "sting" are fakes to fool the dumb birds (and dogs) into not messing with it.

The moth is harder to tell from the piccy as you can't see the tops of the wings, so she's looked in a book, but is probably a Convolvulus Hawk Moth from the looks of it - its the right time of year ... an they like Honeysuckle - largest wing span of any British insect apparently.

PS. Steve, Are you around on Tuesday? I'm in your area and wondered if i might pop by.

 

Yes, I'll be around. It would be good to see you.

 

The moth was a Hummingbird Hawk Moth - looked just like a 1/2 size hummingbird!
And the caterpiller was an Elephant Hawk Moth - not sure about 8" but it was at least three times as big as any other one I've seen! All of us were scared by it...
And I must own up about the piccies - stole them off the web
Too busy watching the hummingbird moth hovering about, and too busy hiding to go near the elephant caterpiller - saw the moth from it as well:

It's a big fella as well..