YESTERDAY afternoon, moving rapidly across my backyard with a caterpillar larger than my little finger.

It was three-and-a-half inches long and is now in a kilner jar en route to the largest Butterfly Farm in Europe at Stratford-on-Avon. It was an elephant hawk moth larva with two large black silver spots down its olive green drab back to a rhinoceros horn tail. It eats fuchsia leaves.

Apparently, with global warming, there is a population explosion this year.

At the farm, it will over winter to be returned and released in my garden next spring as a beautiful maroon and gold creature.

R MARTIN,

Badsey,

Evesham