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Large Red-belted Clearwing (Sesia culiciformis).
This species (Plate [155], Fig. 4) is very similar to the last, but it is larger, and the fore wings are dusted with reddish scales towards the base, sometimes also along the inner margin. The belt on the body is generally red, not infrequently with an orange tinge, but it is sometimes yellow or far more rarely white.
The caterpillar, which is full grown in May, feeds on the inner bark of birch trees and bushes, apparently preferring the stumps left in the ground where stems have been cut down. It is not difficult to find, but as it is about two years in this stage it should not be taken until nearly or quite full grown, and it is safer to leave it until it has entered the chrysalis state. The moth is out in June, or sometimes at the end of May; it flies over birch and rests on leaves, and has been known to visit flowers of the wood spurge and the rhododendron.
Kent and Sussex appear to be the counties most favoured by this species, but it occurs in most of the other English counties in which there are birch woods, certainly up to Yorkshire, and probably further north, as it is found in Scotland (Clydesdale, Perthshire, and Aberdeen). The Irish localities are Killarney, Ballinasloe, and Derry.
Red-tipped Clearwing (Sesia formicæformis).
This is another red-belted species, but it differs from either of the two immediately preceding in having the fore wings tipped with red. (Plate [155], Fig. 5.)
The caterpillar feeds in the twigs and stumps of osier (Salix viminalis), sometimes called "withe"; it is full grown about June. (Plate [156], Fig. 2; after Hofmann.) The moth is out in July and August; it is partial to marshes and other wet spots,
and is fond of a leaf as a resting place. Like the rest of its kind, it is very alert, and skips off quickly on one's approach. Probably the species is more widely distributed in England, but from the records, it only appears to have been noted from Kent, Hampshire, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Essex.