A Garden First today: the Broad-bordered Bee Hawk-moth

 

Photo credit: David Gill

 

We were absolutely thrilled to find this beautiful insect, a summer visitor, on our self-seeded Valerian this morning. The Valerian comes up each spring in our left-to-nature garden and has often attracted the Hummingbird Hawk-moth, but this was rather different.

The wings were flapping so fast that they hardly show up on my photos below, so I am grateful to David for his picture above.  

I began a journaling-style sketch of the moth; I may post it in due course ...