moths – Page 11

I like ’em rare (though well-done is nice, too)

It’s been a while since my last moth post. There were sprinklings of moths on and off throughout March (including the ones I posted about most recently, when the last The Moth and Me came out), but things started to really pick up on the really warm Easter weekend. Since that first moth at the start of March I’ve tallied at least 60 species – I say at least because there have been many little micros that I’ve been happy to leave unidentified. I suspect, were I willing and able to take the time to pin an ID to those little guys, the total might stand at over 70. Not bad for halfway through April. Things only pick up from here.

One of the most satisfying things about the mothing so far this season has been how many of the faces coming to my light are familiar. Of the 47 macro species so far, I’ve probably only had to look up eight of them. Of course, it’s taken me three springs to finally get to this point. And as soon as April fades into May my smug satisfaction at being able to identify so many will slowly dissolve as I become overwhelmed by the diversity. But let’s just be happy in the moment, shall we?

The 39 I could identify are all, by and large, fairly common species. Or at least appear to be common out here, some more than others. All but one of the other eight are species that I’ve only seen one of each so far this spring, and have all been new for me. When I’ve been scanning the sheet, examining all the moths come to the light, these new ones really jump out. It’s one of the oft repeated bits of advice in trying to pick up a new group of organisms (could be anything, doesn’t have to be moths – birds, butterflies, wildflowers, whatever): learn the common stuff first. Once you know the common stuff, it’ll be easier to pick out the things that are different. Also, I find, knowing the common stuff helps you to learn the different taxonomic groups, which in turn helps make identification of less common things easier.

The first and above photos are of the same moth. When I found it on the sheet at my mercury vapour lamp at my parents’ over the warm Easter weekend, two thoughts came to mind: first, “Hey, there’s an interesting Lithophane” (recognition of taxonomic group) and “Hey, I’ve not seen that before” (recognition of something different). When I got it inside and identified it, it turned out to be a Cedar Pinion, Lithophane thujae.

It is so, so tempting when first getting started to want to ID everything. I know, I did. But it’s not humanly possible. Let the less common stuff slide (if you’re obsessive about it, take photos if you must, but don’t bother ID’ing, for now) and focus on the things that there are several of, or potentially dozens of. As I said, spending your first couple years doing this makes identification easier. But more than that, it also gives you an appreciation of what to expect in your area.

That way, when your strange Lithophane that you’ve not seen before turns up at the sheet, you’ll know it’s worth taking a closer look at. Not only that, but you’ll be much more appreciative when you discover that it’s so rare, it’s not even in your province’s annotated checklist, published 1991. Or when you read in the neighbouring province’s guide, published 1999, that (roughly translated) “There is, in the north-east of the continent… a Lithophane near L. lemmeri [taxonomically speaking] which feeds on Thuya occidentalis and perhaps Juniperus virginiana. This species has been found in New Brunswick, Ontario and the states of Michigan and Wisconsin; this new species is excessively rare, [and] is very rarely attracted to light…”.

Anyone can appreciate rare, sure – two years ago I would’ve said, “oh wow, that’s neat”, but to me, then, every moth was new and interesting and unique. You need to get a little bit blasé about the common stuff in order to get really excited when something’s rare.

Incidentally, that same book (Handfield’s guide to Québec leps) notes, later in the same paragraph, “To watch, as this group probably still hides many secrets, including, perhaps, new species.”

Last night I found another interesting Lithophane at my sheet (this time here at my own home). This one appears to also be very rare, although less so, perhaps, than the Cedar Pinion. This one is actually in the original Peterson moth guide (now Virginia Museum of Natural History) by Charles Covell. However, it barely sneaks in to Ontario. To the publication of the Ontario annotated checklist in 1991, it had only been found at one locality, down near the Queen’s University Biological Station in south Frontenac county. In looking up more info on it, I read through Lynn Scott’s webpage on it. She happens to live up Ottawa way, not all that far (relatively speaking) from me. On the page she notes that she had a single individual come to her light in April 2005, which was positively identified for her by the master moth guru up at the Canadian National Collection in Ottawa. That makes two locations. As far as I know (given the resources available to me, and pending hearing from the CNC folks with a positive ID and more info) mine might be just the third recorded locality for Ontario. Even if there are others that I’m not aware of, it’s certainly not common.

Handfield notes, for Québec, “L. querquera… also resembles L. baileyi but this species doesn’t appear in our fauna; its northernmost limit is at Perth Road in Ontario, where a specimen was collected on May 11, 1971.” Bearing in mind that the book was published in 1999, and this was the most recent record he gives, there either aren’t very many of this moth, or there aren’t very many people out mothing. Probably both.

Interestingly, there appear to be two colour morphs of this species, a pale and a dark. The pale is common through its range in the US; thus far, of the tiny number of images for it on BugGuide and Moth Photographers’ Group, the only dark individual was the one caught by Lynn near Ottawa.

So, get to know your common stuff, and get to know what’s common. Then, once you know all that, start checking out the other things on the sheet (or in the meadow, or wherever). Or, if you’re obsessive like me, go back and have a look through your photo archives again. Those interesting observations will not only stand out more readily, they’ll also have a lot more meaning.

I plan to have The Moth and Me #10 up tomorrow sometime. If you’re interested in submitting a post, you’ve got till around midday tomorrow (Friday the 16th) to get it in to me!

Return of the moths

I’m a couple days late posting this, but let me start out by saying that The Moth and Me, the fabulous blog carnival dedicated to our most favourite lepidopterans, has returned after a short three-month winter hibernation. In TMaM #9, Jason at Xenogere has treated us to an enjoyable recounting of a chance encounter with a female Woolly Gray, Lycia ypsilon (check it out to see why this is memorable!), and along the way shared a dozen excellent mothy posts.

I’m looking for hosts for April and onward! Interested? Drop me a line at sanderling [at] symbiotic [dot] ca to say which month you’d like to host.

Outside, our local moths have also made a return with the warm weather. Although I haven’t been seeing as many this year as I was at this time last year, I don’t know if it’s because of weather patterns or just the change in location. Even still, I’ve been getting a pretty good assortment to my lights most evenings over the last week. I thought I’d share a few here.

I very much expected this moth to be one of the first out, but I’d already tallied more than a dozen species before it showed up. It’s called The Half-wing, Phigalia titea, its common name derived from the female moths which have stunted wings incapable of flight. It also comes in an all-black morph which is less common.

This is a Three-spotted Sallow, Eupsilia tristigmata. Although not the first moth, this one was one of the earliest to turn up at the porch light this year. Since then I’ve had a few, which I’ve been pleased with. Prior to moving here I’d only seen one. The Eupsilias are all early-spring and late-fall moths, spending the winter as adults holed up in some snug spot.

This is another Eupsilia, a Straight-toothed Sallow, E. vinulenta. Or, at least, it could be a Straight-toothed Sallow. The only way to tell it apart (without dissecting it to examine the genitalia) from a couple of nearly-identical species is by the tiny “teeth” at the edges of the scales – on all the other species, these “teeth” curl. Most people don’t have the means to check this, and so any moth that looks like this gets labeled a Straight-toothed Sallow. It might be more appropriate to call it part of the Straight-toothed Sallow group… but that’s such a mouthful.

The rulers shown in these photos are all displaying millimeters. The measurements are being used in the guidebook, but they’re also useful for conveying scale. This moth is a member of the micromoths, the group of moths that make up the first half of a taxonomic list. Much like birds are divided into “non-passerines” (the first half, taxonomically) and “passerines”, with moths we have micromoths and macromoths. I’m sure they fall into some sort of broad category header with a fancy scientific name, but I don’t know it.

This one’s an Aurora Flatbody, Semioscopis aurorella. I’m not sure why they’re called flatbodies (beyond potentially the obvious). There are a few Semioscopis species, all of which are early spring fliers.

Most of the time the littler micromoths get overlooked. They’re tiny, harder to see, and tend to be harder to ID both because the patterns have fewer distinguishing marks (less space and fewer scales to form marks with) and because there really hasn’t been a good guide to them. The best one out there is the Moth Photographers Group plates, which is online. None of the printed guides I own include micromoths. The new guide Dave and I are working on will have about 600 species or so. Hopefully this will help encourage interest in the group.

It really is a shame that they’re underappreciated, because some of them have some nifty patterns and shapes. This one is Acleris hastiana (as a sign of how passed-over they’ve been, more than half of them don’t have common names, while nearly all macromoths have common names).

I think this one is also Acleris hastiana. It’s a rather variable moth, with some of the patterns of the adults looking like they really should be separate species. Most of them are pretty striking, though.

All for now. I’ve been posting daily photos over at my moth blog to showcase some of the diversity of this group of organisms. Now that the moths are flying again, I’m going to try to post species appropriate to the date, whatever’s out and about. Swing by and check it out!

Tay Meadows Tidbit – Indian Meal Moth

I’ve spent the last few days at my parents’ place while my mom is away. This afternoon I decided to make some shortbread, but when you’re not in your own house, you often have to rummage around the cupboards to find what you’re looking for. So I was rummaging around and happened to pull out an extra set of measuring cups. I was quite surprised when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed there was something live in one of them!

It turned out to be a little moth, only about a centimeter (<1/2″) long. I recognized it immediately from its size, shape, and distinct pale shoulders: it’s an Indian Meal Moth, Plodia interpunctella. It’s another one of those household interlopers that usually arrive as eggs in storebought product (or adults, having emerged from eggs in the neighbour’s storebought product). In particular they like grains, though they’re not too fussy about the type. The scientist who coined the common name found them in cornmeal – which used to be known as Indian Meal. But flour, oatmeal, nuts, birdseed and even weird things like powdered milk, dried fruit and – gasp – chocolate are all also apparently fair game. They lay their eggs on or near suitable food; the eggs will hatch in 2 to 14 days, depending on temperature, and the caterpillars will take 2 to 41 weeks to grow, pupate and turn into moths, again depending on temperature. If they came in with your storebought product you’ll know soon enough after bringing it home, but if an adult finds it and lays eggs at a later date, it could turn up at pretty much any time.

The species is originally native to South America, though I’m not sure how “they” determine these things; these days it’s found around the world. Anywhere there’s cornmeal, flour, oatmeal, nuts… you get the idea. The adults are the most conspicuous, but you can tell if you’ve got an infestation of caterpillars because whatever product they’re chowing down on will be filled with fine silken threads, almost like a spiderweb fell in and got caught in it. (There will also probably be caterpillars, unless they’ve all pupated and left, but it will be the silk you notice first.) I don’t know what this guy came in with; I couldn’t see anything in any of the obvious grain products. Perhaps he was the neighbour’s moth…

The bold and the beautiful

We’ve had a string of beautiful weather the last few days. Mild temperatures, jacket optional, no toque required. Sunday was by far the nicest, though. A repeat photo of Saturday’s, only better. Note the shoved-up sleeves, bare head. I could probably even have ditched the vest and been fine. Although the thermometer suggested it was warmer today, Sunday afternoon the sun was shining and there was a lovely warm breeze blowing – you know, the sort that caresses your skin, rather than nipping at it. It really felt like a small gift from April, a promise of things to come.

The temptation was enough to get the boldest of the insects out of bed for a look-see. Although I still didn’t see many out in the fields or woods, there were quite a number climbing up the west side of the house in the afternoon. Most numerous by far were the flies. As far as I could tell, there were two types – the greenbottle above, and a gray one that might have been the same species I photographed in March last year, though I didn’t get a photo of the latter to be able to confirm.

I saw a couple of Polistes paper wasps, probably P. fuscatus, the Northern Paper Wasp. I wrote a bit about the life cycle of paper wasps in one of my early posts here, a little over two years ago now. The colony spends the whole summer growing in size in order to eventually produce a crop of new queen wasps in the fall. These young queens mate and then overwinter, while the old queen and all the workers die at the end of the fall. Come spring, the wasps you see emerging are these mated queens, looking to start new colonies. They’ll find a good spot (old nests are never reused) and start building a new nest, laying eggs and provisioning the developing young themselves until enough workers have grown up to be able to take over the duties.

Spiders have been everywhere. They’re so far the only invertebrate I’ve seen active out in the meadows. I’ve seen a few species, and I don’t know what any of them are. I don’t think they’re the same ones I saw on the snow in the winter, but I could be wrong about that. They skitter over the grasses and dead vegetation, and they were dashing about on the foundation of the house. Just little small guys, less than half a centimetre (1/4″) long.

I also saw a Boxelder Bug on the foundation, but it disappeared around a corner and I couldn’t relocate it. I’ve encountered these guys before, on a maple tree at my parents’ old house. At the time I noted that they supposedly would invade homes to find overwintering sites the same way that ladybugs do, but I’d never seen them indoors. Still haven’t, but at least the one this weekend was actually on the house.

Both Saturday and Sunday I was tempted into putting out my mercury vapour lamp to see if there were any moths out and about, woken up by the spring-like character of the day. (When Dan asked what I’d been doing outside and I told him, he said “You really like moths, don’t you? I mean, you don’t just like them, you really like them.” Yes, yes I do.) Saturday wasn’t quite warm enough, and I didn’t get anything. I brought the bulb inside after a couple hours. Sunday, however, I had three – three! – moths come to the house. And not just little micro guys, either. These were all macromoths, big species at least as large as your thumbnail. (Hey, in the world of moths, that counts as large).

The one above was the very first one to arrive. It’s one of the beautiful chunky sallows I was hoping for. In fact, this one was a new species for me. It’s a Goat Sallow, Homoglaea hircina, a species of the northern woods – the Carolinian, Great Lakes-St Lawrence, and Boreal forests (I haven’t mapped this one yet, but I’m getting really good at interpreting written range descriptions…) – where its caterpillars feed on aspen and poplars. It’s a super-early flyer, the overwintering adults out and about in March and April, as soon as the snow starts melting back from the ground. So not a surprise to see it, and perhaps funny that I hadn’t encountered it before.

And the second moth here is a Grote’s Pinion. This one’s found through most of the northeast, and feeds on a variety of tree species. They’re usually encountered among the last of the moths in the fall, and again with the first of the moths in the spring. Like the Goat Sallow, they overwinter as adults and are quick to take advantage of warm weather.

The third moth I saw fluttering in the eaves of the front porch overhang, but wasn’t able to relocate it when I came back with my long-handled butterfly net to try to reach it.

Judging from the weather forecast, that looks like it might be it for moths for at least the next week or so. A tantalizing hint of things to come!

First moth(s) of 2010!

Yesterday was a beautifully mild day, the sort that says spring is on the way, even if it’s not quite here just yet. There was still a nip to the air, but the gorgeous sunshine made you forget it was there. I could have sworn the temperature must have reached at least 8 or 9 °C (~47 °F) but weather.ca’s records indicate it only reached 5.5 in the nearby town where the temperature is recorded. Amazing what a little bit of sun can do.

The birds were feeling spring in the air; the chickadees were singing in the trees around the feeders, as were the American Tree Sparrows; I heard a Downy Woodpecker calling, and from across the street our Man in Red was doing his “cheer! cheer! whit whit whit whit!”

Still, by sundown the temperature had fallen to nearly freezing again. I’ve been checking the porch lights hopefully for the last week or so whenever I go out to get wood, but it’s always too cold. Last night being no different, I naturally assumed that when Dan called me down (“Moth alert!”) he meant one of the little jobbies who’ve been hanging around inside the house over the winter, the ones too small to be able to identify without counting genital bristles or something equally obscure.

But no, he meant actual moths! Honest-to-goodness, free-range outdoor moths! The temperature had continued to fall and by that hour had reached -4 °C (25 °F). What the heck these little guys were doing out and about at that temperature is beyond me, but there they were. I scrambled for a few of my moth jars, which were still tucked away in the basement, collected them up and brought them in out of the cold. I put them in the fridge where it was a relatively (for them) balmy 4 °C (39 °F) (or so; there’s no thermostat in our fridge to tell you the temperature. But it’s above freezing, anyway).

This morning I took them out, did my best to get photos (these little tiny micro-moths are such a headache to photograph, because they have really low volume:surface area ratios, meaning that they warm up a lot faster than the chunky-bodied macro-moths. And clearly these species were fairly cold-tolerant in the first place. I couldn’t get one of them to cooperate at all and had to photograph it through the plastic jar), and then released them on the porch in the sun where they could warm up and fly off to someplace to spend the night.

The first three moths are all the same species, and it was one of these that Dan noticed and called me down for. The other moths were spotted after I came out to collect the first one. I had a reasonable idea on the approximate taxonomic area it belonged to, but when I searched the species in that group on the online identification pages at Moth Photographers Group, I couldn’t see anything that was a good match. So I submitted one of the photos to BugGuide.net and got a prompt response that it was simply a “lightly-marked” example of an Inornate Semioscopis, Semioscopis inornata.

The fourth and final moth was in a closely related but different genus, Agonopterix. They have a distinctive squareish shape, so I knew where this one belonged right away, and it was easy enough to find an ID for it. I believe this one is A. clemensella, which I don’t think has an official common name, but which I’ve unofficially called Clemens’s Agonopterix in my records (remembering complicated Latin names with unfamiliar spellings and letter groupings is not a skill I was blessed with, so I give moths an English label if they don’t have one already, even if it’s only for my own use). This was a new Agonopterix for me, but that’s not a great surprise; there are 30 or so Agonopterix species in North America, and I’ve seen just a handful.

So I was pretty stoked at this event, finally seeing moths at the light after a long three and a half months of mothlessness. Although I won’t really consider the moth season to have started until I get a big macro to the light. Nothing against the micro-moths. But there’s just something about a chunky sallow…