In Praise of Luna: A Moth Encounter

 Backyard Nature, Books, Natural History, Night  No Responses »
Jun 202020
 

June is the time for appreciative people to sing in praise of the moths…. (Gene Stratton-Porter)

THE OTHER EVENING, along a stretch of Piney Woods Church Road bordered primarily by loblolly pines, with a scattering of sassafras, sweet-gum, and persimmon, I encountered a male luna moth. When I met up with him, he was just in the process of unfurling his elegant wings; half an hour later, when I left him, he had achieved the glorious pose in the last of the series of photographs above.

SEEKING TO LEARN MORE OF LUNA’S WAYS, I turned to my bookcase with its growing collection of old natural history books and field guides, wondering what nature writers thought and wrote about Actias luna over one hundred years ago. First, these brief words, from “The Moth Book” by W. J. Holland, 1916:

This common and well-known insect has an extensive range from Canada to Florida and westward to Texas and the trans-Mississippi States as far as the region of the great plains. The larva [see below]…feeds upon the various species of walnut and hickory, the sweet-gum, the persimmon, and other trees. In North Carolina it appeared to be particularly fond of the persimmon. The cocoon is thin and papery, spun among leaves, and falls to the ground in autumn.

Next, I consulted my copy of “Moths and Butterflies” by Mary C. Dickenson, 1901, with a less than satisfactory result:

The larva feeds on hickory, walnut, and birch; and the cocoons are found under these trees…. The cocoons are very thin, so thin that color can be seen through them and the time of change from the green caterpillar to the brown chrysalis be ascertained. The large light green moth is very beautiful indeed and is a great favorite with amateur collectors.

Finally, I opened Gene Stratton-Porter’s “Moths of the Limberlost” from 1921, where I found this richer and far more satisfying account of the majestic creature I had seen:

Clinging to my finger, the living creature was of such delicate beauty as to impoverish my stock of adjectives in the beginning. Its big, pursy body was covered with long, furry scales of the purest white imaginable. The wings were of an exquisite light green colour; the front pair having a heavy costa of light purple that reached across the back of the head: the back pair ended in long artistic “trailers”, faintly edged with light yellow. The front wing had an oval transparent mark close to the costa, attached to it with a purple line, and the back had circles of the same. These decorations were bordered with lines of white, black, and red. At the bases of the wings were long, snowy, silken hairs; the legs were purple, and the antennae resembled small, tan colored ferns. This is the best I can do at description, A living moth muse be seen to form a realizing sense of its shape and delicacy of colour.

Photograph by Gene Stratton-Porter from “Moths of the Limberlost”, 1921

The Little Yellow Butterfly and the Little Brown Moth

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Sense of Place  2 Responses »
Jul 112014
 

On this morning’s walk, I also encountered a moth and a butterfly.  Both were unassuming — the moth just a flutter of brown whose wings I never even got to see, and the butterfly with bright yellow wings that were less than an inch across.  The little yellow butterfly is, in fact, a Little Yellow Butterfly  (Eurema lisa).  For lack of identifying features in my photograph, I will call the moth a Little Brown Moth.  Who knows?  That could be its name, after all.

 

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Delicate Cycnia

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Natural History  2 Responses »
Jul 092014
 

On my way to Piney Woods Church Road today, I paid more attention than usual to Rico roadside.  Part of that was self-preservation — cars and trucks were flying by at near-lightning speeds, drivers miles away, ensconced in their own words.  Part was because I was looking for a wildflower I had seen the day before, and even after locating it, I maintained my same level of attention to my surroundings.  The result was a delightful discovery of a white and creamy yellow moth, about an inch long, motionless in plain view.  Later I learned that this particular moth, a Delicate Cycnia or Dogbane Tiger Moth (Cycnia tenera) feeds on dogbanes and milkweeds as a caterpillar, taking into its body the same cardiac glycoside that makes Monarch Butterflies immune to predators.  With little to fear from the skies, this particular moth did not so much as twitch, even when I drew my camera up close to take this photograph.

 

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Day 171: Plume Moth

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 202014
 

The Cleyera at the corner is pulsing with activity these days.  Most of the visitors are honeybees, but I am finding quite a few other insects, ones previously unfamiliar to me.  The key, I have found, is to arrive in the early morning, when the air is still cool and insects aren’t dashing too rapidly about.  Even then, it takes quite a few photographs to secure one crisp image of a bee.  Fortunately, this particular insect, with about a half-inch wingspan, was quite content with being motionless.  In fact, when I first saw it, I thought it might be dead, or a molted exoskeleton of something.  This plume moth (Family Pterophoridae) has a fragile, ghostly quality about it — so insubstantial compared with most moths and butterflies I have encountered in the past.

 

Plume Moth

Day 153: Moth — It’s What’s for Dinner

 Insects, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project  No Responses »
Jun 022014
 

My leg having improved considerably since yesterday, today I was able to park near the Rico Rd. intersection and hobble my way up Piney Woods Church Road about a third of the distance and back again. I passed some minute yellow flowers, perhaps an eighth of an inch across, and took a few photographs.  But the find of the day was definitely this robber fly or assassin fly, in the family Asilidae (very possibly Promachus fitchii), feasting on a small moth.  Robber flies are aggressive predators that pierce their prey with a proboscis, delivering a blend of neurotoxic and digestive enzymes that paralyze their victims and dissolve tissues and internal organs, which they then ingest as if through a straw.

 

Moth for Dinner

Day 147: Luna Moth Forewing

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
May 272014
 

On my walk today I glanced down onto the ground beside the roadway and saw this forewing of a Luna Moth (Actias luna) — a memento mori, a reminder of how fleeting nature’s beauty can sometimes be.  It makes me realize that my single walk down Piney Woods Church Road each day isn’t nearly enough to take it all in — I am missing so much that happens during the many hours that I am not there.

 

Luna Moth Forewing

Moth Encounter

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Natural History  1 Response »
May 192014
 

On my Piney Woods Church Road walk today, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I discovered that a Saturniid moth cocoon that I had been watching for ages (and photographed earlier this year) had opened, and a lovely female tulip-tree silkmoth (Callosamia angulifera) was resting beside it, occasionally fanning her wings.  Of course, I had forgotten to put my memory card back into the camera, so I raced home, added the memory card, and drove back in time to take these photographs.

 

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The day’s wonders were not over yet, though.  I returned home, did a few chores, and left with my wife and our four dogs on our evening walk.  I was excited to share my discovery with Valerie.  But instead of just one moth, I found two moths mating!  While she was resting there, the female tulip-tree silkmoth most likely released a pheromone to attract male moths in the area.  The result are these photographs below.  I had never witnessed moths mating before this.  After mating, the male will die, and the female will fly off to lay her eggs on an inviting food source, such as the leaves of a tulip poplar tree (though black cherry and sassafras will work fine, too).

 

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I returned to the same privet branch the next morning, May 20th, and both moths were gone.  To my surprise, I inspected the cocoon that still remained attached strongly to the branch, and it was unopened.  By some coincidence of nature (perhaps because that branch is an excellent piece of moth real estate), the tulip-poplar silkmoth I photographed yesterday just happened to choose the same location as the cocoon from which to broadcast her pheromones.  I am left still waiting for another emergence to happen. 

Day 139: Tulip-Tree Silkmoth Wing

 Backyard Nature, Geometry and Nature, Insects, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
May 192014
 

On my walk late this afternoon, I was startled and delighted to discover that the Saturniid moth whose cocoon I photographed earlier this year had chosen this very day to emerge.  It was a female tulip-tree silkmoth (Callosamia angulifera).  What a beautiful creature, and how fortunate I was to be passing by — and to notice this moth — at the time of her emergence.

As an addendum, I discovered the next day that I was mistaken — it was a different moth from the one in the cocoon!  The cocoon remains intact as of 23 May, and I continue to await the emergence of yet another moth.

 

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Day 74: Waiting to Emerge

 Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Mar 152014
 

On my late afternoon walk, I discovered the cocoon of a promethea moth (Callosamia promethea), partially encased in a brown leaf and hanging from a shrub along the roadside.  Based upon the mass of the cocoon and the absence of any holes in it, I am fairly confident that a moth is waiting inside for the right moment to emerge, later this spring.  I wonder if I will be there when it happens?

Waiting to Emerge