moths – Page 4

By the hundreds

Moth jars in fridge

Hundreds of moths

This is my 100th post. It arrived rather quickly, it’s hard to believe I’ve written that many entries already, on subjects as varied as fungus and flora, birds and bugs, earth hour and green parties (the events, not the political groups). I thought the hundredth post deserved special attention, to mark a milestone, but I wasn’t sure how by. I spent some time thinking about it, and finally decided upon a post of hundreds – recent observations of multitudes of whatever it is I’m observing.

I happen to be at my parents’ this week, taking care of the horses while my mom’s away at a conference. Unfortunately, they’re not as easy as goldfish where you sprinkle them some food and they’re good to go for a while. I don’t mind coming out to care for them, though, as it gives me an excuse to visit the countryside. One of the things I use that excuse to do is catch moths, of course. I had a few sheets up last evening, and this. It was on the cooler side overnight last night, about 15 C (60 F), but there was still a good selection of things coming in to the sheets and trap; this evening is warmer and there’s much more activity. Since I need to photograph everything in order to later identify it, I jar the moths I don’t know and tuck them in the fridge. It doesn’t take long for the fridge to fill up. The above photo is the state of things after last night.

Insects on Goatsbeard

Hundreds of bugs

In my mom’s garden there are a couple clumps of goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus), a perennial native to North America and western Europe. It produces sprays of white flowers, which insects absolutely love. I highly recommend that any budding entomologist buy themselves a goatsbeard for their garden. It gets everything: butterflies, of course, but also day-flying moths, wasps, bees, flies, beetles. You can even find mosquitoes nectaring on the flowers. During the plant’s peak blooming period, which lasts a couple of weeks and is about this time of year, the blooms will be alive with activity, covered in bugs. Hundreds is not an exaggeration here. The longer you stand there, the more you see. It attracts some pretty interesting things.

Beetles

Hundreds of beetles

Earlier in the month I did some mothing down at the research station. Or tried to, anyway. I didn’t actually end up catching very many moths, though I’m not sure why; it was fairly warm that evening. However, what I did end up getting lots of were beetles. In many shapes and sizes, but the most apparent were the June Bugs. These guys aren’t a lot of fun to have come buzzing in to a sheet at the best of times, since they’re clumsy and just as liable to run into you as the sheet. Having about 100 come in to the light was almost creepy. In this photo, those large dark spots are the June Bugs; there are 67 visible on the sheet, and there were easily a few dozen more on the other side, on the ground, and in the nearby vegetation.

Colewort

Hundreds of flowers

The colewort in the garden is also still going strong. Because the plant is ginormous, there are easily hundreds upon hundreds of flowers blooming on it. The colewort attracts a lot of insects, too, and has a fairly strong and pretty scent. Yesterday I watched a few interesting beetles, flies, and a tiger swallowtail dropped by to sample things. This wouldn’t be a bad plant for the garden of an entomologist, either, but it does take up a lot of room.

Chokecherries

Hundreds of berries

I noticed while making the rounds of the garden that the chokecherry tree is beginning to put out its berries. They’re still far from ripe, being a green the same shade as the leaves, but they’re nearly full-size now. The tree is covered in them, and staring up into the canopy creates an interesting effect, almost abstract in appearance.

Hail

Hundreds of hailstones (and raindrops)

The last couple of weeks we’ve had regular, near-daily afternoon thunderstorms. Many of the thunderstorms have included hail, often rather large hail. I tried to take a photo of some of the rather large hail, but couldn’t really capture it any better than this. It’s been strange just how much rain we’ve got this year. I heard something about this June being the wettest on record (so far), but can’t seem to corroborate that. All this rain is especially strange compared to last summer, which was the polar opposite – days upon days of nothing but clear skies and sunshine, not a drop of rain in sight. My parents actually had concerns over their well running low and had to implement a strict water conservation plan. Won’t be an issue this year.

I actually started this post last night (Tuesday), but have been quite busy filling my mom’s shoes while she’s gone. In addition to the dentist appointment, which was quick and went well, but still took a chunk out of my day. I have new respect for the amount of work my mom (or my sister, when she’s here and takes over) puts in around here, especially with the horses. I don’t think I fully appreciated just how much time was involved in caring for them.

In any case. Here’s to another happy hundred.

A few colourful moths

I’m at my parents’ this evening, and it is chilly, unseasonably cool (it seems to me) for a mid-June night, nearly summer. I would ordinarily be outside, checking for moths on the blacklighted sheets I’d have set up, but it’s too cool for that tonight; approaching 10 C (50 F), the moths are, for the most part, tucked into sheltered spots waiting for a warmer night to fly. Since it’s June, there ought to be many nights of 20 C (68 F) temperatures that would be much more ideal. I’ve got my trap running anyway, since it involves very little effort and hey, you never know. But I’m not expecting much when I check it in the morning; the couple times I’ve peeked out the window at it I haven’t seen anything at the sheet I set up behind the light.

In contrast, earlier this month I had some excellent, warm nights. I have yet to see any nights with a sheet covered in moths, but that’s probably just as well – my identification isn’t good enough yet for me to be able to pick through the common stuff to locate the more unusual species, and I would probably feel a little overwhelmed. Even just the couple of busy-ish nights I’ve had, with 50-80 species, have been enough to keep me busy for many hours the next day. Another disadvantage to not knowing anything is that I have to photograph every moth I encounter if I want to identify it, whereas if I already know 40 of those 50 species there’s not much photographing that needs to be done the next day.

The other problem with getting so many moths is trying to choose a select few to post to the blog. With such variety, how do you narrow it down? For the non-moth’er, the large or colourful species are the obvious choices, but even among that group there is quite a selection. I eventually settled on half a dozen that I thought were the most interesting from the last few weeks. Narrowing it down to just the species I had identified helped considerably as well.

The above moth is a Wild Cherry Sphinx (Sphinx drupiferarum), which came to the blacklight at my parents’ last week. I happened to be checking the sheet as it flew in, and I knew something that large had to be a sphinx, so I really wanted to catch it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my large-moth containers there at the sheet with me. I didn’t trust it to remain (it still hadn’t settled on the sheet, but was buzzing across its surface), so I ended up catching it in one hand, creating a loose cage with my fingers. Good thing I did, too, as it’s a somewhat uncommon species, and one that The Moth Man hadn’t seen before, so we needed photos.

On a similar note, another uncommon species that he hadn’t seen so we needed photos of was this one, the Silver-spotted Ghost Moth. The reason this species isn’t often seen is less due to its abundance, however, and more because of its habits. Most moth’ers attract their moths to some sort of lure, either a UV light or sugary syrup concoctions. This moth rarely comes to lights, so it’s infrequently caught. It has a sort of lekking behaviour, where giant swarms of males form in the evening near the species’ host trees, alders, and female moths will come to check them all out. The moths are most often encountered in these swarms. In the case of my moth, it was the rare individual that did come to check out the light, and I found it sitting in the trap. This species is also unusual in that, taxonomically, it is more closely related to the wee bitty moths than the larger moths, but it itself is about two inches long.

The caterpillar of this moth will be more familiar to most people than the moth itself. This is the adult form of the Wooly Bear caterpillar, that fuzzy, brown and black caterpillar frequently seen in the fall and perceived as a predictor of the nature of the impending winter. For such a distinct-looking caterpillar, the adult is rather bland, although its abdomen has an orange wash to it. The adults are known as Isabella Moths (Pyrrharctia isabella).

There are a number of different species of tiger moths, which are generally characterized by being about an inch in size and fuzzy, with a fuzzy caterpillar stage. The Isabella Moth is part of this group, as is the above, appropriately named the Pink-legged Tiger Moth (Spilosoma latipennis). There are two tiger moths that are nearly entirely snow white, this one and the very similar Agreeable Tiger Moth. The primary difference is in the legs – the Agreeable’s are a yellow-orange instead of pink. I’ve seen a few Agreeables so far this spring, but this was the first Pink-legged I’d caught.

Yet another bunch of tiger moths have black and tan-striped wings. This one is a Harnessed Tiger Moth. There are half a dozen or more species with this sort of pattern, and telling them apart relies on the size of the stripes, the presence of cross-bars, and the colour and pattern of the hindwings. Last week I also caught a Little Virgin Tiger Moth, very similar but for the orangeish rather than pinkish hindwings, and thinner and more numerous stripes.

When Blackburnian and I were at his mom’s place, we went for a walk through the bit of forest that backs onto her property. As we walked we kicked up many moths, about an inch in size and a bland tan colour. They were these guys, Stone-winged Owlets (Chytolita petrealis), so named for the stone colour of their wings (apparently; I think of stones as gray, not beige, personally). The long up-curved “snout” is actually a pair of palps, and are used as sensory organs. Many moths have palps, but they’re more exaggerated in some species than others.

This last one is the subtle but beautiful Unicorn Prominent (Schizura unicornis). I’m not sure why it’s been called unicorn since it has no obvious horn (unlike the previous moth). I love the shades of mocha, peach, olive and teal in the wings of this moth. I couldn’t get him to do it again for the photo, but while he was sitting in the little jar I had him in he had his hind end and wings tightly furled together and raised up in the air, like a bit of peeling bark. The prominents are a varied bunch, with some mottled like this one, others smooth and sleek, and still others rather fuzzy like the tiger moths.

As usual, if you’re interested in browsing some of the other species I’ve caught, check out my moths photoset on Flickr.

Wings of a warm week

This past week we’ve had beautifully warm temperatures. Up to 20 C (68 F) or more on some afternoons, warm enough to wear a t-shirt (some warm-blooded types might also pull out the shorts or skirt, but I need for it to be at least 25 before I’d feel comfortable with bare legs. Either that, or sitting in the sun with no breeze). These warm daytime temperatures translated into warm nighttime temperatures – a regular occurrence come late May, but in April are worth taking advantage of for mothing. Some early-spring species live for these warm April evenings, and there are many that are more difficult to find as the season wears on.

As indicated last post, early this week I was at my parents’, out in the middle of the countryside. The rural setting there, it turned out, and the relatively diverse habitats on the property resulted in an excellent collection of species observed over the two nights. I ran the blacklight and sheet in the self-portrait of the first photo for a few hours of the evening, shutting down about midnight, and then had my trap set up which ran the whole night. In the pic it’s shown with a blacklight, but I actually had the more powerful mercury vapour bulb in it, which I think helped with the night’s catch. Although the blacklighted sheet didn’t do too poorly, either, really. It wasn’t a wide array of equipment; I also had two more blacklights and an extra sheet to what I put out, but I didn’t want to have to spend a lot of time taking it all down. And, as it turned out, I didn’t really need it anyway.

I ended up with a conservative estimate of 42 species, but there was probably a few more than that – I haven’t yet ID’d all the little small guys, and there’s a good chance that, with my inexperience, I may have written off some stuff as variations of other more common species. This isn’t too shabby for mid-April, as I understand it. Most of these species have emerged from overwintering as larvae or pupae, but a few overwinter as adults. They tend to be the raggedy ones, at least in the spring. Later on in the year the raggedy moths are just worn with age. As I photographed them I released them on to a concrete statue of a raccoon my mom has beside their front stoop. Because they go into a sort of torpid state they didn’t move very far after I placed them on the statue.

This was possibly my favourite moth from the two evenings. I caught five of them total, three on one night, and two the other (it’s possible that one or both of the two were among the three caught the next night, I suppose). It’s a Lettered Sphinx, one of the smaller of the sphinx moths, and fairly blandly coloured compared to many other sphinxes. I loved the way it curls its abdomen up when at rest. I didn’t realize what it was at first, something about photographs of sphinxes makes them look bigger than they really are. This was actually one of the larger moths I caught, but it was still less than 4cm (perhaps 1.5″) long. For whatever reason, these moths only came to the mercury vapour bulb at the trap, I didn’t have any at the sheet.

Another that only came to the trap was this Dogwood Thyatirid. Considering the abundance of Flowering Dogwood, the larvae’s host plant, at my parents’, it wasn’t a great surprise to discover five in the trap over the two nights, either. They’re a pretty nice moth, with a hint of pink to the whiteish patches that just doesn’t really come through in the photos well.

This moth was the opposite, I had five individuals over two nights that only ever came to the blacklighted sheet. Now why would that be? I hypothesize that the blacklight produces a slightly different wavelength of UV light that the different species orient to with greater or less preference. But really I don’t know. This striking green moth is The Joker, and was the very first moth on the very first night. Considering that up to that point most of the moths I’d seen were rather drab, this really made my evening. And, I gather, they only get better from here.

Here’s another one that I was pleased to see. It belongs to the genus Caloptilia, and it’s tiny, less than a centimeter long. This group of moths are among the leaf miners that create trails through deciduous leaves. Like the sphinx moths, when I first saw photos of these guys I thought they were substantially larger than they really are. I thought they were pretty neat-looking, propped up on stilts as they seemed to be. I got one to a sheet last fall, and immediately recognized it (it’s really a rather distinctive shape and posture), but was a little shocked at how tiny it was. Little moths (the so-called micromoths) are tricky to photograph because they tend to come out of torpor very quickly, basically as soon as you disturb them, because their small size means their bodies warm up and resume normal function very quickly. I got two of these guys, both in the trap. The first one I only got a photo of it on the carton it was resting on while in the trap; as soon as I nudged it to try to get it onto something more photogenic it took off. This one is waving its antennae furiously as it contemplates leaving.

This last moth I like because of the intricate mottling and nice mossy-green shading to the pattern. It’s a Grote’s Sallow, and I think I got five between the two nights (what is it about the number five?). Imagine this guy tucked into a crevice on an old, jagged-barked tree trunk. He’d blend right in and you’d never know he was there.

It’s hard to pick just a few species to highlight of the dozens I got, but those were definitely among my favourites. Those interested in checking out more of what I got can visit my moths series on Flickr.

I’ll wrap up with this photo of Lettered Sphinxes snickering behind a Curve-toothed Geometer’s back.

Early spring moths

I hadn’t intended for yesterday’s post to ramble on quite so much as it did. When I sat down to start to write, I had only planned for a single introductory paragraph explaining the background of my interest in moths. Somehow, when I place my fingers on a keyboard, they get carried away, and words just start to flow out.

So the initial purpose of yesterday’s post was to talk about the start of the mothing season. On Monday evening the weather was reasonably warm and clear, so I visited TTPBRS for an hour or so and hung up my sheet and blacklight to see if I could draw anything in. I just got a single moth, but I was pleased to get anything at all given that it was still so early in the season. The first moth of spring was the above individual, a Speckled Green Fruitworm moth. It’s a widespread and abundant species, and one of the first to come out in the spring, even though they overwinter as pupae, not adults. They’re extremely variable, with individuals ranging from the buffy-brown of this one, to grayish, to whiteish.

This variability can really throw me off with some of these species ’cause you think you’ve got something different or special and it turns out to be just another fill-in-the-blank-here. And then you’ve got other species that look so similar to each other they can be hard to tell apart. I guess that’s not all that unlike birds. You’ve got the variable Dark-eyed Junco with all its different-coloured subspecies, which can all occur together in some parts of the country, and then you’ve got the Willow/Alder Flycatcher complex, where the two species are only really distinguishable by song.

Moth number two was the top introductory photo, a day-flier called The Infant, found at my parents’ the following day. Being out in mid-day, basking with its wings spread in the sun in the lee of the barn, being brightly coloured, and then also the way it fluttered, it all reminded me of a butterfly, but it wasn’t any butterfly I was familiar with. Of course, the shape and position of the wings, and the lack of club tips to the antennae, all gave it away as a moth in the end. It’s a common and widespread early moth of the north, usually found near birch, its foodplant, and could be seen (along with a few other day-flying early-spring species) on a hike in the woods on a warm afternoon.

That evening I set out a couple of sheets hoping to perhaps catch a few moths. Well, was I ever surprised to eventually get not just a handful, but 50 moths to the sheets in four hours after dusk. Of this 50, 24 were the above species, by far the most common of the evening. This may be because their larval food is maple, birch, cherry, and a few other deciduous species, all quite common in the forests around my parents’ (in fact, the one sheet was actually hanging from the branches of a maple). They overwinter in the soil and pupate to emerge in early spring. The females are flightless, lacking wings altogether, and resemble something like a cross between a spider and a beetle.

The above two moths are of the same species, The Half-wing, so named because females of this species are also flightless, but sport cute half-sized wings to at least resemble a moth. Yet another species whose flight period is restricted to early spring, these were caught in moderate numbers at the sheets, as well, the second-most common with 18 individuals. The species has two colour morphs, the white individual at left, and a dark melanistic morph, at right. I caught two of the dark guys, and originally thought they were a separate species before I looked it up. They’re closely related to the Spring Cankerworms, though separate in genera.

I caught a few other less common species, as well, including the above Morrison’s Sallow, which overwinters as an adult (this is a particularly ratty individual), and a few “micromoths”, little guys less than an inch long, which are more challenging to identify (so I haven’t yet).

The weather has cooled down, and we may not have another good evening for moths for a little while, though the long-range forecast suggests next weekend may be fairly warm. In the meantime, I’ll be looking for some of the day-fliers on the sunny afternoons.

Going beyond birds

Silver-spotted Tiger Moth

I’ve been birding since 2000, when, as a first year student in university, I decided I wanted a job in my field rather than a boring office job, and was offered an opportunity to work for the Toronto Zoo doing an “inventory” of their breeding bird community. This is not a long time, compared to many birders, particularly given my age. I came into birds late in life; most serious birders I’ve met have started either in their early-teens (13-14 seems to be the age something twigs for a lot of people), or as a young child. Myself, with the rural setting for my childhood, I was certainly aware of the birds, and knew all the common backyard stuff, but the birds that you have to go out to look for in order to see I didn’t get to know till that job at the zoo.

I have had the advantage of having spent a very large portion of the last five years out in the field, nearly every day. When you’re out there seven or eight hours every day you hone your identification skills rather quickly. Just about anything likely to be encountered on an average day at any time of year here in southern Ontario I would feel pretty comfortable identifying now, by sight or even just sound. Some of the less common birds of our region I could identify by sight but perhaps not sound, and I will be the first to admit that some groups (gulls, for example) I generally stink at – though mostly for lack of interest in learning (nothing against gulls, but they just don’t hold my attention for very long).

Lunate Zale

So what do you do when you’ve reached your desired level of proficiency with something? Well, you could try to hone it further (suppose I could buckle down and learn those gulls). You could try investigating deeper (learning to identify the different subspecies). You could travel to new areas (works best if you have money and time to travel). Or you could branch out into something different.

White Underwing

Lacking money and any real desire to get nit-picky with bird identification, I’ve opted for the latter. Even early I started learning butterfly identification (the obvious second choice to a birder – you’re standing there watching the birds with butterflies dancing about your feet anyway), as well as odonates (the dragonflies and damselflies). I got familiar enough with these groups to be able to identify all the common things. But for whatever reason, I never really got caught up in them the way I am with birds.

Pale Beauty

Then, last summer, I traveled west, to British Columbia, for a job. The job didn’t work out quite as planned, and I spent three weeks staying with the organization’s gracious president, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for word on the situation. While there, I discovered he had a blacklight. And I thought, what the heck, let’s throw a sheet up and see what I get.

Violet Brocade

Well, that hooked me. I don’t know what it was, specifically. Perhaps the amazing diversity and beauty of the moths that came in. Perhaps the mystery of these nocturnal creatures that makes them so hard to observe. Perhaps the fact that they’ll come to you, wherever you are, and you never know what you’re going to get. TheMothMan has well over 500 species of moths recorded for his little (and I do mean little) urban Toronto backyard. Perhaps it’s that moths are everywhere.

Ailanthus Webworm

While I don’t think they’ll ever trump birds on my priority list, they may eventually run a close second… we shall see (I dislike making such bold predictions). So far, with the exception of those nights in British Columbia and one hosted by TTPBRS in early September, all my “mothing” has been done in the off-peak (for moths) late fall and, now, early spring periods. The moths are just starting to come out now, on the warmer nights, but these cool-weather moths are generally more drab. The flashy species are mostly found in the warmer months, and I’m rather looking forward to looking for them in the next few months.

Unidentified Eucosma sp.

Doesn’t matter where you live, attracting moths is pretty easy, and I almost guarantee productive (unlike trying to bird from your suburban backyard, where House Sparrows and starlings are your most likely guests). Any night where the temperature is warm (>10C/50F), hang a white sheet from a clothesline or against the side of your building, and set up a light in front of it. Although a regular white bulb will work okay, bulbs that emit rays in the UV spectrum, such as blacklights (cheap, less than $5 at Home Depot) or mercury vapour bulbs (considerably more expensive but brighter so will draw more in) will give you the best success, since the moths are attracted to the UV wavelengths. Make sure your white sheet is the sort that glows in the dark – some types of fabric don’t phosphoresce, which decreases its effectiveness.

Lempke’s Gold Spot

The above photos are all ones I took either in British Columbia, or at the TTPBRS moth night. They’re only a few of what I have, primarily of some of the brighter species. If you’re interested in seeing some of the rest of my extremely modest collection of moth photos (mostly from BC at the moment, and taken with flash; I’m refining my technique), visit my moth set on Flickr.