I head off on the book tour for the Peterson Field Guide to Moths in a week and a half! I’m busy finalizing details and getting myself organized to go; lots of little things to take care of before then.

Here’s the final tour schedule. If you have a question about any of these events, please contact the person listed (if it’s regarding the facilities) or myself (if it’s regarding the event details, or if no person is listed).

*Event attendees may leave early if you need to go – we won’t trap you!

April 29
Dearborn (Detroit), Michigan
8pm – midnight*
University of Michigan-Dearborn Environmental Interpretive Center
Presented by UMD with Rouge River Bird Observatory
More information (with link to map).
Please RSVP with this form.

April 30
East Liberty (Columbus), Ohio
8pm – midnight*
Big Darby Headwaters Nature Preserve
Presented by The Nature Conservancy Ohio
More information.
Please RSVP with this link or email sross at TNC.org by April 25.

May 1
Wheeling, West Virginia
7:30 – midnight*
Oglebay’s Good Zoo
Please RSVP to Penny Miller by email (pmiller at oglebay-resort.com) or phone 304-243-4027.

May 2-5
New River Gorge National River, West Virginia
New River Birding and Nature Festival
This is a registration-only event. If you’re interested in participating, visit the festival’s website here.

May 6 – day off for sanity

May 7
Davis, West Virginia
7pm – midnight*
Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center
More information.

May 8
Millersburg, Pennsylvania
8pm – midnight*
Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art
More information.
Registration suggested but not necessary. Members free, non-members $3.

May 9
Hockessin, Delaware
7pm – 9pm* (or later)
Ashland Nature Center
Presented by Delaware Nature Society
More information.
This appears to be listed as members-only, which I hadn’t realized. If you are interested in coming to this event but are not a member of the DNS, contact me and I’ll see about sneaking you in. :)

May 10
East Brunswick, New Jersey
8pm – 11pm*
East Brunswick Cultural Arts Center, Playhouse 22
Presented by Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission
More information.

May 11 – day off to visit friends

May 12
Athol, Massachusetts
8pm – midnight*
1542 Pleasant Street, Athol
Hosted by Dave Small of the Athol Bird and Nature Club
For more information contact Dave by email (dave at dhsmall.net) or phone (978-413-1772) (event posting here)

May 13
Danby, New York
8pm – 10:30pm* (or later)
Danby Town Hall
Presented by Danby Conservation Advisory Council
More information.

The teabags I use for everyday use are of the two-cup sort. I sort of felt like I was wasting half a teabag when tossing them into the compost after just one use, so for a while I’d started saving them on a plastic lid for a second use later in the day (and since I usually have multiple cups in a day, they didn’t normally sit long). This stopped last week when, upon lifting the saved teabags, I discovered a silverfish underneath.

I very nearly dumped the silverfish along with the teabags, but changed my mind in time. This isn’t the first silverfish I’ve ever seen and it definitely won’t be the last, but it was the first one that was on a conveniently portable surface that I could set up my camera over. And it was being remarkably cooperative, sitting still while I moved the plastic lid around. It might be the best opportunity I’d get for a silverfish photo, at least foreseeably.

There are apparently 18 species of silverfish in North America, organized into three families. Of these, one species (in its own family) is found exclusively in carpenter ant nests in forests of northern California and Oregon. Another four species (in the second family) are restricted primarily to caves, termite nests and other subterranean habitats in the southeastern US. The rest (in the third family) are widespread and found in many habitats. Two are found around the world and are common inhabitants in our homes: the Common Silverfish (Lepisma saccharina) and the Firebrat (Thermobia domestica). The former is typically resident of our damp areas, most usually the bathroom, while the latter sticks close to heat sources and is normally found near furnaces, hot water heaters, insulated ductwork, etc. This one is a Common Silverfish. I’ve never seen a Firebrat.

I have to admit I’ve always been fascinated by silverfish, in a slightly creeped-out way. Their fluidity of movement is sort of unreal. Till now I’d only ever observed them in washrooms, and I was perfectly happy for them to stay there. However, they’re not harmful in any way, really. They don’t bite, and don’t spread disease. They’re vegetarians, with a sweet tooth: their scientific name, saccharina, refers to their preference for sugars and starches. They’ll take these where they can find them, be it glue in wallpaper or book bindings, starches in natural fibres (both cloth and paper), or food scraps or other biological material. (Wikipedia lists dandruff, even.) But if necessary, they can go without food or water for weeks.

An individual silverfish can live as long as two to eight years. Think about that. If you moved in the last few years, there might be silverfish in your house that have lived there longer than you have. Fortunately, they’re not that prolific; a female may lay fewer than 100 eggs in her lifetime. And a healthy household population of earwigs, spiders and house centipedes will also help keep their numbers down.

I’m sort of tempted to paint a dot on the back of the next one I find, except they continue to moult even as adults, so it might shed the dot before the next time I see it and I’d never know. I guess I’ll just stick to watching from a distance.

A week ago when I was out with Raven a glint of white in one of the black cherry trees in our back fields caught my eye. Wondering if it could possibly be a tent caterpillar nest so early in the season, I checked it out. Sure enough, it was. This feels very early to me, but I admit I’ve never caught the nest at such an early stage before, barely started. Normally I check in when it’s already the size of my fist or thereabouts. I start noticing them (without having to consciously search) in early May usually. Was it just that I was paying attention this year?

Part of the reason I was watching was because of the warm spell we had in March, of course. I worried that it would not only accelerate the budding-out of the trees and shrubs, but also the growth and emergence of early-spring species. I did, in fact, have an Arched Hooktip (a moth) show up at my light one night at the end of that week; ordinarily the species first shows up in mid-May, so it was nearly two months early. It didn’t seem a stretch to think it might have prompted the tent cats out prematurely, too.

When I investigated more closely I discovered all the little caterpillars in this particular nest were dead; blackened and unmoving. We’d had several nights in a row of freezing or just-below temperatures, including one hard night of several degrees below. I wondered if that had killed them. Tent cats use their tents to help thermoregulate, and I would assume that, since we still get frosts potentially as late as mid- to late May most years, it also serves as protection against frost. But the little nest of these cats was still so small, perhaps the size of a plum. Maybe it didn’t provide enough protection.

When I did my usual late-winter walkabout searching for tent caterpillar eggs I only found a few clusters, all on the same tree. The other trees that have had them in most past years didn’t have any, so I was already starting to wonder if it’d be a year of low abundance for the species. This freeze won’t have helped, if it’s killed all the caterpillars from this egg cluster. I couldn’t really tell if all the eggs had hatched or only some of them. I’ll hope some hadn’t hatched yet and might go on to build a new nest.

In another field I found a second nest. This one was larger and the caterpillars on it obviously older – and, happily, still alive. They were clustered together sunning themselves on the surface of the nest, which they’ll do on cooler days. This nest was closer in size to an orange, so I wondered if the extra layers of silk had helped protect the caterpillars against the cold.

They’d already started making their silken trails up the branch from the nest to their feeding location. This is one of the reasons tent caterpillars appeal to me so; there’s so many neat aspects to their biology that are fascinating to look for. They leave this trail as they walk so they know where the nest is when it’s time to return. The nest is their protection from both the elements and predators, so you can understand the desire for a lifeline like this.

These were the buds the line was leading up to, though. The whole tree was like this. There can’t honestly be enough plant material there to sustain them yet, can there? I guess they’ve got little mouths and wouldn’t eat very much, so maybe there would be. The nest was full of frass (see the little brown dots in the photo with the sunning cats), so they were obviously eating something, and it was orangey-brown like the bud sheathes here.

I’ll be keeping an eye on these guys over the next little bit to see how they do – not that there’s much I can (or would) do if the weather goes cold again. But I like to keep tabs on my local families of wildlife, and tent cats are such easy ones to monitor…

First, another update on the moth guide. Many bookstores and retailers have already received and put out their copies of the guide, so the book is officially NOW AVAILABLE! I’ve also heard that Barnes & Noble has started shipping online orders; not sure about Amazon. I believe some retailers outside of the northeast won’t be selling the book till April 17, but presumably Barnes & Noble will still ship there now. One way or another, though, you should be able to get your hands on a copy quickly, if you want one!

For those who have ordered a signed copy from me, I’m afraid I’m still operating on an April 17 release-date schedule – not anticipating bookstores to get or put out their copies early. I will be trying to get the books out as soon as I can, but please expect it to still be another couple of weeks. Sorry about that!

Now on to a couple of other titles recently added to my bookshelves…

——————-

The Bluebird Effect by Julie Zickefoose

I received this book the same day I got my first copy of the moth guide, about a month ago. At the time it was an advance copy, before the book was available in bookstores. It’s been released since then, so you should be able to find it now.

I’ve been a follower of Julie’s blog for about five years now, having found it shortly before starting my own (hers was, in fact, one of the blogs that inspired mine). Not long after I discovered her blog, and without realizing I was already a fan of hers, my mom gave me a copy of her first book, Letters from Eden, for Christmas. I read that book in just a couple of days, immediately after Christmas. I’ve been looking forward to Julie’s new book pretty much since finishing that last one. It’s been a labour of love for her, the work spanning nearly as long as it took us to do the moth guide. But for all of Julie’s fans, it’s been worth the wait. The book was recently selected as Book of the Week on Oprah.com, and it’s easy to see why.

The Bluebird Effect is a collection of essays on the many different birds that have touched Julie’s life over her years as a birder and rehabilitator, starting with a male bluebird her husband saves from a local Sharp-shinned Hawk one day, and who thanks her by returning year after year to nest in the boxes in their yard. The title is drawn from the idea of the butterfly effect, applied to this bluebird; both in terms of the bluebird’s own effect on his local world through the young he raised, and his effect on Julie as she watched him and got to know him.

The narrative is easy to read, picking you up and pulling you in with that same poetic quality that fills Julie’s blog. But of course, what makes the book so unique are the hundreds of watercolour paintings and pencil sketches that fill the pages, illustrating her stories. She’s got a distinct style to her artwork, managing to capture the essence of a bird in just a few quick strokes of the pencil or brush, a skill I’ve long admired.

The stories recount the close encounters of the avian kind that Julie’s been lucky enough to experience in her years of working with birds, and it’s impossible not to come away from them without an understanding of the reason she gives up her time (sometimes lots of it!) to helping these individuals. I think this excerpt from a chapter on a Red-tailed Hawk sums it up well:

[O]pening the door into his life, if only for a little peek, brought home to me that almost everything in nature is so much more awe-inspiring than it first appears. … I thought about those who would question whether one middle-aged redtail was worth all the fossil fuel and frozen mice, man-hours, phone minutes, medical expertise, and X-ray film expended on his behalf. I’d argue that he was worth all that and more. Though it would not matter to him, in the Ohio countryside beneath his outstretched wings, he’d left a handful of human hearts, connected in joy.

———–

Moth Catcher by Michael M. Collins

I was contacted by Michael Collins a while ago asking if I’d be interested in a copy of his book. Never one to turn down a free book (and this one had the promise of moths!) I said sure, I’d love to see it. It arrived not long after, and I had a quick flip through then set it on my shelf. I’ve been on a fiction binge lately and haven’t been in the mood for non-fiction (Julie’s book being the exception). Finally, earlier this week I finished up my most recently library novel and, not really being grabbed by any of the other titles waiting for me on my shelf, I decided to give this a go, since I’d promised Michael I’d review it. I’ll be completely honest: I was planning to read the first 40-50 pages or so, enough to get a feel for the book so I could post something here, and I could maybe come back to it at a later date.

Well, I finished it in three days. Admittedly, it’s not a long book at just over 160 pages, and small pages at that. But that’s unfairly dismissive of the writing, which was very engaging. I had been expecting the book to be mostly about the capture and rearing of silkmoths, which was sort of how it had been described to me (not to mention what the title infers). But it’s not really about that at all, though that’s sometimes touched on; it’s more about hybridization of species in nature, with moths playing the research subjects, and showing how the author’s early interests helped influence his choice of species and location for his work.

The book falls into three sections. Chapters 1-3 are all a sort of personal chronicle of his boyhood (including a recipe for his neighbour and friend’s mint sauce), and then his experiences hiking the canyons and mountain passes of the book’s subtitle. This was definitely my favourite section of the book, taking me back to my three weeks spent on an ecology field course in the deserts of Arizona and California one year, and to my summer doing bird surveys in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Lake Tahoe. Even without this personal experience, though, the pictures Michael draws of these regions should bring you right there with him.

In chapters 4-6 Michael starts to focus more on his graduate research looking at hybridization in the mountain passes where two closely related silkmoth species from either side of the mountains come together. These are also fascinating as he talks about collecting species and looking at the different mechanisms he discovered that maintain the two species as separate. And finally, in chapters 7-8 he discusses the science of hybridization in a broader sense, drawing on his own work and that of one of the inspirations for his graduate studies, Walter Sweadner. While still interesting, I did feel the book started to bog down a bit through these sections as the narrative gets more scientific and less personal, and found myself skimming the text in spots.

Still, I found the book to be a light, easy read, and would definitely recommend it for anyone looking to learn more about silkmoths, the southwest, or species hybridization.

There may well be an ebook version in the future, but it won’t be available on April 17. So if you’ve pre-ordered a copy, you’ll need to cancel and order the print copy instead. Sorry about that, everyone!

A couple of weeks ago most of the northeast enjoyed a long stretch of very unseasonably warm temperatures. Here in eastern Ontario we had nearly a week of days above 20°C (68°F), a couple of times warm enough that my winter-acclimated body started protesting the “heat” (comes mid-summer, I’ll be laughing that I found this temperature hot). But it was glorious, from a recreational perspective. I’ve been busy wrapping up a couple of work projects, but I made sure I took some time to get out and enjoy the weather every day.

From an ecological point of view, I’m curious to see if the early spring will cause serious disruptions. The warm temperatures were sustained long enough to trigger trees and shrubs into leafing out about two weeks ahead of schedule; our garden crocuses are bloomed and done already, when last year they didn’t even flower until April 9. It feels like mid-April out there, which has been a little disconcerting the last few days while it’s still been March.

And speaking of early things… One afternoon Dan pointed these snakes out to me. They were writhing in a small pile on our lawn. I’d never seen this behaviour before but I knew immediately what was going on, so I grabbed my camera and went out to try for a few photos.

It was a mating ball, of course. Male snakes emerge first, in the early spring, as temperatures begin to rise and the hibernacula where the snakes spent the winter begin to warm. Usually a couple of weeks after the first females begin to come out. She broadcasts a pheromone as she goes about her routine, which very quickly attracts nearby males.

She’s often noticeably larger than the males are. In the photo above, she’s the darker olive-yellow individual on the left, and the brighter yellowish head on the right belongs to a male (the male, in fact; by the time this photo was taken, they were copulating).

The females are a scarce resource, and males literally wrestle over who gets to court her. Sometimes a dozen snakes or more can form a writhing mass of bodies with the female somewhere in the middle of it all. That’s what was going on when Dan first spotted it, I think. By the time I got out there with my camera, one male had come out the winner.

As I stood there snapping photos, a few hopeful males, late to the party, slithered in, checked out the situation, then slithered away again without joining in. I recall reading that the males track the pheromone left behind on the ground as the female slithers, so I’m thinking maybe these males have followed her scent trail only to find, once they finally reached her, that she was no longer broadcasting the pheromone. Or maybe she starts broadcasting a different one that says, “Sorry boys, I’m taken”? Perhaps the successful male gives them a fierce look that says, “Don’t you dare lay a coil on my girl”? In any case, none of the newcomers even bothered making an attempt to join her.

Though I didn’t notice any reference specifically stating so, I assume the successful male is the one who manages to get his hemipenis positioned and inserted into the female first, rather than winning any sorts of one-on-one battles with the other males the way (say) rutting deer do, or winning the female’s favour the way (say) displaying prairie-chickens do.

The hemipenis of snakes is sort of sac-like and usually held within the body, but expands and everts when the male is preparing to mate. In many species it has barbs or hooks that make it difficult to remove it from the female while it’s everted. Once it was just down to the two mating snakes, after a few moments the female decided she wanted to leave and started slithering away; but the two were still joined, presumably because of these barbs, and I got a look at the copulatory site as they twisted their bodies about. The female is the upper, duller snake in this photo, the male the lower, brighter one. They quickly disappeared into the long grass so I didn’t see what happened after that.

So that was kinda cool! Spring continues to march onward here, which is giving me lots to look at and (hopefully!) lots to post about. Stay tuned!

With the gorgeous weather yesterday, I knew there’d be moths flying come evening. I put my mercury vapour light out, even going to the trouble to dig out and pin up my white sheet in front of it. And I wasn’t disappointed! I got a great diversity, 15 macromoths of 11 species, and another dozen or so micros of the agonopterix and acleris variety.

I collected up one individual of every species except the Straight-toothed Sallow, which was the First Moth of 2012. The top shelf of the fridge was satisfyingly crowded. Since I’ve already got dozens of photos of these species on the plain background I usually use for species portraits, I thought I’d do a collage, in groups.

The above group is all the sallows (again, minus the Straight-toothed, which I sort of wish I’d brought in just for completeness). Top left: Goat Sallow, Homoglaea hircina; top right: Morrison’s Sallow, Eupsilia morrisoni; bottom: Three-spotted Sallow, Eupsilia tristigmata.

There are three early-spring geometers that you can pretty much count on on any given night in March and early April. I was pleased that all of them turned up last night – just singles of each. Top to bottom: Small Phigalia, Phigalia strigataria; The Half-Wing, Phigalia titea; and Spring Cankerworm, Paleacrita vernata. Having this photo with them all in the same shot helps emphasize the size difference between Small Phigalia and The Half-Wing.

And finally, the pinions. The third group of overwinterers who’re likely to come to lights early in the season. I was surprised there were so many species last night, ordinarily I just get the bottom one here. Top: Dowdy Pinion, Lithophane unimoda; middle left: Dimorphic Pinion, Lithophane patefacta; middle right: Hemina Pinion, Lithophane hemina; bottom: Triple-spotted Pinion, Lithophane laticinerea.

These guys have distinctive shapes and so are easy to pick out, usually. There are two shape types: the long, narrow gray ones, and the bow-winged (look at the outer edge), shoulder-padded ones. Within each of the shape groups there are a number of look-alike species. For instance, Hemina and Wanton Pinions look very similar, but Heminas tend to be orangier with more diffuse markings than the grayer Wantons. Likewise, Grote’s and Triple-spotted can be hard to tell apart, but Triple-spotted typically are a smoother gray with the ST line often sparser/dotted or nearly absent compared to the rougher-gray Grote’s.

Since we’re still a month out from the release of the moth guide (but only a month! April 17!) but the pinions are flying now, I thought I’d scan in and post the identification plates for the group. Enjoy!

For all of these, click on the image to see a larger version.

I’ve been waiting for a really nice, sunny, mild day to head out with my cordless drill to clean out our nestboxes, and the weather conditions were perfect for it this afternoon. I took photos and will follow up on that on probably Wednesday.

While I was out there, though, I saw a number of other critters enjoying the sunshine like I was. I spotted a few fuzzy caterpillars, mostly Woolly Bears like the above. They emerge so early, I don’t actually know if they spend any time eating before they pupate. There wouldn’t be a whole lot to eat yet. Although, I did spend some time raking out our garden, and the first shoots of daffodils and croci are coming up, as is the rhubarb. And quite a number of plants stay evergreen under the snow. So maybe there would be enough.

On the way back to the house I came across this guy, who I initially mistook from a distance to be another Woolly Bear, but who turned out, upon closer inspection, to be a Giant Leopard Moth caterpillar. I still get inordinately pleased whenever I discover one of these guys, even though they’re not uncommon here. We didn’t have them where I grew up (or if we did, I never noticed them); it wasn’t till I moved east that I started seeing them. So I still get that thrill of somethingcool! when I find one.

As I was walking back from the last nestbox I noticed a robin off some distance away in the forest, making a lot of noise in the leaf litter. I’d brought my binoculars with me (something I don’t always do, since I do most of my birding by ear these days and it’s one less thing to carry around) so I was able to watch him closely. After a moment or two he picked something up, dark and thick and C-shaped, carried it a short distance, then plunked it down in the leaf litter. I’m fairly certain it was a dark fuzzy caterpillar like one of the two above. I think he might have been trying to de-bristle it prior to eating it.

I made a brief detour out to the rail trail and walked down to the creek, and discovered these tracks out there. What first caught my eye was the size of them. Certainly much bigger than any deer I’d seen around here. They’re cloven like deer and domesticated ungulates (except horses/donkeys), but there was really only one animal I thought could make something that large, at least that I would reasonably expect might be found walking down the rail trail. Which is a moose, of course.

Having seen a moose in our back fields last fall, this wasn’t quite the stretch that I might have otherwise thought it. It’s possible he’s hung around the area, in one of the swamps nearby, keeping out of sight. I took a few photos and double-checked my tracks guide when I got back. They seem to be potentially confusable with domestic cows, with the main distinguishing feature being the front of the track – the hooves are pointed in moose, but rounded in cows.

You can’t see it as well in the first photo, but you can tell in the second that the front of the tracks are pointed. It was pretty clear in person, too, that the paired hooves were long and tapering at the front. They were relatively fresh… I didn’t notice them on my way out, only on my way back, though that’s not to say that they weren’t there and I just missed them on the way out. I tried following them to see where they went, but they seem to curve out from the fenceline and then back into the fenceline. I can only presume he jumped the fence, then got spooked after walking only a short distance down the trail and jumped back. And yes, moose, like all deer, can jump:

Photo by Bruce Barrett (nordicshutter) on Flickr; CC-licensed (the only such photo I found of a moose jumping, though there are others that are not CC)

Although it’s probably the first moth of the year that I look forward to most as far as signs of spring go, it’s definitely the return of the first avian migrants that marks the arrival of the season for me. In particular, Red-winged Blackbirds. Where I grew up there was a small swampy wetland area at one corner of the property, and every spring the song of the Red-winged Blackbirds would ring out from that swamp just as the snow started getting mushy and the ground muddy. They’d show up at the seed scattered below the feeders, and would perch in the tree branches above the house. Even before I started paying attention to birds, their return was a sure sign of spring. The sound of a Red-wing singing immediately recalls memories of my childhood to my mind.

The same warm front that enticed the first moth out of hiding last Wednesday brought with it the first Red-winged Blackbirds. They’d shown up at my mom’s, an hour or so south of us, last weekend so I knew it was just a matter of days before they arrived here. Red-wings, like all blackbirds, are diurnal migrants. They roost, often in large flocks (especially in the fall), overnight and then move during the first half of the day. They put down by the afternoon so they have some time to forage before going to rest at night again. When I went out for my afternoon walk with the dogs on Wednesday, and all during it, I watched for Red-wings without seeing any. It was only upon returning to the house that I heard the distinctive chuck of a Red-wing in the trees by the feeders (the photo above is a record shot of that bird). Spring has officially arrived.

The next day, Thursday, we got our first grackle. I have no similar associations of grackles with spring, other than that they’re usually on the tail of the Red-wings (who nearly always arrive first by a few days). Just the one so far, that I’ve noticed. On Saturday, Dan spotted a pair of Pine Siskins at our feeder, and today, a Purple Finch. Dan said he’s seen siskins around all winter, in low numbers, but they must hunker down by the time I’m out for my walk with the dogs in the afternoon; I haven’t seen one since December. Ditto on the Purple Finch.

All of these birds are temperate migrants, moving a short distance south of their breeding range to slightly milder regions – though not necessarily a whole lot milder, as some blackbirds and grackles do spend the winter in Ontario, along the shores of the lower Great Lakes. The siskins and finches winter around here, but many travel farther south, beyond our border; their movements aren’t really migrations proper as they’re more food dependent and vary from year to year, but they often follow similar timing when they happen. The individuals we saw this weekend may represent some of these returning, rather than locals, though we can’t really tell.

As far as the two blackbird species, the timing of their return tends to be with the first warm fronts that bring spring-like temperatures to a region. They can get by on seed, but they’re also insect-eaters when there’s insects to be had. If you see Red-winged Blackbirds sticking their bills into cattail heads, for instance, they’re actually looking for small moth caterpillars that spend the winter there, rather than gathering fluff or eating the seeds.

I don’t have a photo of the first Red-wing from last year, but the first grackle seems to have showed up on March 21 (or at least, I have seven photos of a grackle from that day, and I pretty much never photograph grackles except the first one to arrive because it’s so exciting). So it might be he’s a little ahead of schedule. The date I have in my head for the arrival of Red-wings is March 15. This is carried over from my home where I grew up, too, which is more southern than where I live now. I don’t really have any data to back this notion up, but it does seem to me that the blackbirds being back already is earlier than normal. That first one last week was on March 7.

There is some concern about climate change causing the timing and pattern of bird migration to shift. Many birds use temperature cues rather than day length to know when to migrate. Before humans arrived on the scene, birds and the food they depend on had evolved together so that everybody’s life cycles were all carefully timed. Birds would arrive back from migration timed just right to be able to set up territories, build nests and incubate eggs so that the insect population that they depend on to feed their nestlings peaked just as the eggs started hatching. Early nesters who come back too soon because they’ve been fooled by abnormal weather patterns risk their own survival (should the weather turn foul again – this is especially dire for birds like swallows that catch their food on the wing) and/or that of their nestlings (if there’s not enough food available yet when they hatch).

My mom posted about this and talks about it in a little more detail. She also includes a link to a CBC radio broadcast on the topic, which happens to interview some Canadian birders and biologists I know personally. Worth a listen if you’re interested.

Yesterday was beautiful. (I felt the need to start the post this way because every first-moth-of post I’ve done has started with these words, I discovered.) I took an extra-long walk with the dogs in the afternoon, soaking up as much of that lovely southern-warm air and gorgeous sunshine as I could, to store up against today, which is overcast and wet and blustery. We return to winter for a few days, but the mild temperatures are forecasted to return next week, happily.

With the weather so mild yesterday, I figured there was a pretty good chance that the first moth of the year might make an appearance. So I dug out my mercury vapour bulb from where it had spent the winter, set up my tripod and put it out. I turned it on just before 7pm; finally, at around 10:30pm, as I was beginning to consider the evening a bust and turning it off for the night, the first (and only) moth arrived.

I’d been expecting a little wee guy, most likely an agonopterix of some sort, which tuck themselves into woodpiles and other cracks and are quick to warm up. We still had a good 7 or 8 inches of snow on the ground, and I thought that might affect the potential for moths. So when I spotted this guy fluttering around over my head, I felt a rush of excitement. I was worried he’d fly off before I could catch him!

But he didn’t. The first moth of 2012 iiiis…. a Straight-toothed Sallow (Eupsilia vinulenta)! (Of course, the element of suspense is sort of lost when you head up the post with the photo of the individual in question.) He’s arrived about on schedule, compared to past years:

• 2011 – March 17 – Morrison’s Sallow (Eupsilia morrisoni)
• 2010 March 7 – Goat Sallow (Homoglaea hircina)
• 2009 – March 6 – Morrison’s Sallow (Eupsilia morrisoni)

In actuality, last year’s first moth was an unidentified micro in late February, but the weather hadn’t been very warm so it felt less like the first moth of spring and more like a fluke moth of winter. Winter really hung around last March, too, and our first spring-like days weren’t till the middle of the month. Also, the true first moth of 2010 was on March 2, an Inornate Semioscopis (Semioscopis inornata); but I wanted to compare the first macromoths across the years so it didn’t fit.

You’ll notice that three of the last four years, the first moth has been a Eupsilia species. Another early species that I haven’t yet recorded first but is generally seen in the earliest days is Three-spotted Sallow, Eupsilia tristigmata. This whole genus is cold-weather moths, appearing late in fall and early in spring. They all overwinter as adults so they can emerge on those first mild days. Their caterpillars all feed on tree species, so they get out early, lay their eggs on the bare branches, and the caterpillars hatch as the tender new leaves are emerging.

I’d placed my bets on a Morrison’s Sallow being the first moth of the season… so I was wrong, but not by much!