Cake

The Boy Wonder and his mother visited today, to bring R his birthday presents from their household. At the moment L's car pulled into the yard I was tracking a Hummingbird Hawkmoth around the red valerian growing along the patio wall, but it was already a bit antsy about that, and a car passing so close to the wall was the final straw, causing the moth to whisk up and away into the next-door garden. I knew it was only a temporary setback though - I've identified three different individuals coming to the valerian over recent days, which very probably means there are more around than that, and I was confident I'd get another chance to photograph one before the day was out. 

I set the Boy the task of keeping an eye on the valerian patch for me, and made him laugh by imitating the jerky way Hummingbird Hawkmoths move around when they're feeding, but in the event it was dinner time before this one turned up, by which time he was long gone, off with his mother to the Green Man Festival. I'm sorry he didn't get to see it for himself, but with luck a parent will show him this photo, which has caught the moth's long, dipping proboscis pretty well, and is also unusual in having showing both wings extended.

When our visitors first came into the house, L immediately whisked one of her packages out of the kitchen and into the privacy of the back hall. "Mummy's brought a cake!" said the Boy breathlessly. "We made it! and it's got candles on it!" And then, his face freezing in sudden horror, "But it's a surprise!" R and I barely had time to reassure him that we'd already forgotten what he'd said, when L reappeared with an iced lemon cake with fresh strawberries on the top, and seven candles. After R had made a great show of blowing out this representative ten per cent sample, B and L sang Happy Birthday to him in Welsh, following which there wasn't a dry grandparental eye in the house.