Midsummer magic

I disturbed this ghostly moth as I was clearing out an overgrown flower bed. It's called a plume moth because its wings are divided into five separate 'feathers' which, like a fan, can be rolled out and in. The moth, hardly more substantial than a piece of thistledown, showed no inclination to  fly away but kept settling back on the blades of grass  thus giving me ample opportunity to take pictures. As I did so I was reminded  of the notorious case of the Cottingley Fairies when in 1917 two girls, Frances (9) and Elsie (16) claimed to have taken photographs of winged fairies fluttering around them at the bottom of their garden. The images convinced many of the great and good in the spiritualist world and beyond, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that they were genuine and the girls stood by their story as interest and argument mounted.  It was not until many decades later that they confessed that their fairies were forgeries and explained how they had done it (not with moths). The whole case with its enduring ramifications is described here.  (The public attention generated then seems very like the way a social media story can go viral today.)

The larvae of the plume moth feed on bindweed with which my garden is well stocked.