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Dragon-wing rug

If you had a dragon-wing rug — I do mean a rug made out of dragon wings — and it was terribly old and worn but still in use in the family home, and it lay on the floor of a room at the back with a couple of big armchairs to fold up in and lots of dark wooden bookshelves and not many windows, the rug would probably have fringy bits along the edges, and worn patches where you could see leathery underlayments where the scaly feathers attached, and it might still glitter a little with rainbow membranes.  In fact it might look a lot like this:

dragonwingrug

White-lined sphinx moth wing detail

This isn’t a dragon wing, it’s the wing of a sphinx (a mystical and legendary creature in itself) but in this case the moth version.  All four of the moth’s wings were discarded by an ærial predator over our yard last night, and all four wings fluttered to the rearwingground and settled within feet of each other.  An owl, or a bat, or a nighthawk had shucked it, perhaps — the body would have made a fat protein-rich mouthful but the wings are dry and awkward to swallow, so the predator neatly clipped them and let them fall.

sphinxwings

Given this scenario of on-the-wing food prep, the question remains — if you had a dragon-wing rug — what sort of hunter could do that to a dragon?

  (All photos A.Shock, click to enlarge!)

Posted by Allison on May 13th 2013 10:07 pm | 2 Comments
| View close in,cool bug!,doom and gloom,Invertebrata,natural history,yard list category

2 Responses to “Dragon-wing rug”

  1. don 06 Jun 2013 at 10:39 pm link comment

    Dragon-wing rug! Sweetie, you slay me…

  2. Allisonon 07 Jun 2013 at 8:55 am link comment

    Hmmm, not intentionally I assure you. But if so… can I have your wings?