I photographed this moth on a brick wall. At rest it looked like a fairly boring brown moth, but when it moved you could see the black and white hindwings. Compared with all the other little brown moths on the wall that night, this one looked quite attractive. The wing span is about 6cm. if anyone knows what it is, please let me know.

Did you know that Praying Mantis eyses changed colour at night - I didn’t realise this until a couple of days ago. I photographed this Mantis at night on one of our potted fig plants, and the red eyes were very noticable.

Granny’s Cloak Moth is a large brownish grey moth. You often see them in dark buildings like in your garage, or shed or in outdoor dunnies. They look faily drab boring moths but in the light of the flash they have quite a nice pattern. Click on the pic for more info.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve added a few dozen new pages to the insect section of the site.

How do you tell the difference between sawfly larvae and moth/butterfly larvae.

From what I’ve read, one way to tell the difference between sawfly larvae and moth larvae is to count the legs. Sawfly larvae have 9 or more pairs of legs - 3 pairs of true legs at the front and 6 or more pairs of stumpy legs (called prolegs) at the back. Butterfly and moth caterpillars never have more than eight pairs of legs (3 pairs of true legs plus up to five pairs of prolegs).