Yesterday afternoon, as hubs and I were sitting out on our balcony, what I thought at first was a large butterfly (and maybe even a Monarch!), flew in from the trees next door, flitted and darted around near us and then landed nearby under a metal wall hanging.

I slowly approached it with my phone camera and it stayed put. Hubs suggested that I place my thumb beside it to give some scale. Again, it didn’t budge, so I thought I’d hold my thumb near it for a while to see if I’d be lucky enough to have this beautiful creature at least investigate my hand.

Well!! Investigate it did, right to the point of crawling onto my hand and resting there long enough for me to get what I think are some pretty good shots.

Here’s the sequence of events:

In an image search, I learned that this is a Darling Underwing Moth and isn’t a common species here. How lucky was I that timing and patience came together and paid off!

Photo Note: Once I had taken the initial shots of this guy, when I placed my thumb next to him, I locked the focus on the front part of my hand. Even with repositioning my hand a tiny bit as he explored it (because I had locked the focus in advance), I was able to catch some pretty clear images.

“The wait is as much journey as the motion, because timing is pivotal.”

Innocent Mwatsikesimbe