The Oldie

Moth mosaic

The Jewel Box: How Moths Illuminate Nature's Hidden Rules

By Tim Blackburn

Weidenfeld & Nicolson £20

I belong to a group who obsessively log and report migrants. And we have a magazine, Atropos, with a skull in its logo.

But the death’s head is on the furry thorax of the Hawkmoth Acherontia atropos. And the mothing community is perhaps the only on-line group to celebrate both migrants and colonisation.

The ecologist Tim Blackburn highlights the ‘vital’ role played by migrants in the

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