Various Geometer moths are found in forests and openings throughout North America, from Canada through Panama. They come to lights at night, but FCGs are also seen by day. Pyralid moths include many small species with varied lifestyles, but the ones that draw the most attention are those that have an impact on human food supplies. There are about 6,000 species of Pyralids worldwide, and one-tenth of them are native to North America.
Two moths—one a Ruby Tiger Moth and the other an owlet, the Golden Borer Moth; one common and cosmopolitan and the other in peril due to shrinking habitat; both sporting rich, saturated colors (and they both have neat genus names).
The Giant Silk Moths are magic. Some have spectacular markings, and they can be huge, with wingspreads close to six inches. The Luna Moth has a wingspread of about four-and-a-half inches. The lime-green wings are somewhat transparent—you can just see an eyespot on the lower right wing through the upper wing.
The BugLady takes lots of pictures as she moseys around—flowers, landscapes, a surprising number of people, and, of course, all manner of bugs. Bug pictures may stall in the BugLady’s X–Files, awaiting identification—some for a long time. Here is a selection from the X–Files. In some cases the BugLady knows part of the story; in others, even less.
The world is full of well-nigh inscrutable moths, but this trio—the Yellow-collared Scape Moth, the Eyed Paectes Moth, and the Pink-barred Lithacodia Moth—stand out in a crowd. They are distinctive moths, from different moth families, that have one thing in common—their taxonomy is shifting.
The Bad Wing, Green Leuconycta, and Green-patched Looper are three admirable moths that are outfitted in emerald.
The BugLady has been stalking invertebrates that hang out on the east wall of the Field Station lab. The wall is painted cinderblock that warms up in the morning and probably keeps some heat as it gets shaded in the afternoon. Grass grows right up to the edge of the building. The BugLady hypothesizes that bugs can enjoy the residual warmth without getting fried by the sun, because she sees some small critters on the north wall but very few on the bright south wall. She found some familiar faces and some new ones—plant-eaters and an array of carnivores that come to collect the herbivores.
White-lined Sphinx Moths can be found from mid-spring until early fall in open areas (parks, gardens, grasslands, scrublands and deserts) throughout North America, from Canada to Central America and the West Indies (they’re also found in Europe). They gather nectar on a variety of “flat” flowers like apple but is able to reach deep into tubular flowers like petunias, columbine, and honeysuckle.
As veteran BugFans will recall, there are a multitude of bugs out there that are pretty cute but that simply don’t have much information attached to them. In fact, there are around 100,000 species of insects in North America, and a lot of them don’t even have a common name.
Just when the BugLady thought that her Front-Porch-Bugs had called it quits (except for the crickets and katydids), she went out one night with the dog and found these two newcomers, the Goldenrod Hooded Owlet and Wolf’s Otiocerus, sitting inches from each other under the porch light.