Out there, in our back gardens is an amazing hidden world under our noses. Few people realise what details pass by us everyday because of the tiny scale in which it exists.
Large Yellow Underwing - what the moth should have looked like!
By Jerzy Strzelecki (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
A perfect example of this occurred one day after school when my daughter was playing in the garden and she called for me to come and see a moth she had found. It was a Large Yellow Underwing, we get a lot in our garden but on the drive was a mangled looking specimen yet she was thrilled to have found it and asked if we could inspect the poor thing under the microscope. 
The Large Yellow Underwing we found.
Although it was dead it was carefully picked up and taken to the shelf where we keep these treasures to be inspected later. Little did we realise how beautiful the moth really was.
Initially we inspected the wings at low magnification....
wing scales at low magnification
....followed by high magnification.
wing scales at higher magnification
wing scales at even higher magnification
Next were it's antennae and we were impressed to see scales covering them too.
antennae
The front part of it's head was pretty cool with forked hairs or scales in lovely shades of brown.
Large Yellow Underwing forehead
But the most breathtaking revelation was it's eyes, look at them!
Eye detail
These fabulous photos have been the inspiration for a recent resin pendant design which will shortly be featured in the Nimanoma shop as well as making an appearance at various events including Art in the Pen.
Underwing pendant