A day in the birthing unit: Heliotrope Moth

I will spare you the gory details but let’s just say the birth of my son involved a vacuum, not of the cleaning variety and some stitching not of the clothes making kind. Although to be fair the doctor did say, needle aloft, her face framed by my stirruped legs, “It’s just like hemming a dress.” 🤣 Strange looking dress, but okay. So I felt a little odd watching this pretty little Heliotrope Moth laying her eggs, her abdomen curled under the leaves she landed on, me absolutely not respecting her privacy one iota.

I don’t get to witness it often, but it’s always special to watch animals laying their eggs. This moth would feed for a while, her long proboscis unfurling when near a flower she wanted to feed from. She’d then flutter around searching for, I assume, a suitable spot on which to lay her solitary egg. Now, the eggs I saw her lay were out of reach deep in the garden bed at the Botanic Garden and as I’m a stickler for rules (mostly and when it suits 😉) I didn’t trample across the flowers to get to it. I would have LOVED a macro photo as butterfly and moth eggs are always intricately beautiful and apparently these eggs have a microscopic hexagonal grid across the surface!

I ended up watching her for maybe 40 minutes as she repeated her pattern of laying, feeding and then resting. She certainly made the whole birthing experience look easy, plus she had snacks! Now that’s how it’s done!

Heliotrope Moth

Wollongong Botanic Garden