I had set a goal of photographing and identifying 100 moths by the end of June. The photographing part is easy, I have well over 100; the ID'ing part is not always so easy. There are over 11,000 species of moths in North America, so it takes a lot of time and patience to match up my photos with the on-line guides! The numbers by the moth names are called Hodges numbers, they are a catalog listing number that helps tremendously in verifying the moths.
Last night 2 of the slu
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g moths came through for me to help me reach my goal! First I spotted the pretty green one, a
Smaller Parasa #4698
Parasa chloris sitting on the ceiling of the carport. I moved it so I could get a better photo, it is really hard to take a picture of a moth straight over my head! The second one was a
Shagreened Slug Moth #4669
Apoda biguttata, that one made my goal --- #100! The moths in this group often hold their abdomens up above their wings, it gives them a strange effect! They get the "slug" designation from their slug-like caterpillars.
Th
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is next one falls into the "truth is stranger than fiction" category! It is called a
Boxwood Leaftier Moth. They are so weird looking! We do have several Boxwood shrubs in front of our house, I guess I need to look and see if there are any caterpillars tying the leaves! :)
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As I was looking at this weird moth, I noticed a pair of
fireflies mating on the wall. They were "tail to tail", I guess if he was ugly, she didn't have to look at him! ;) I wondered why they didn't have their "close encounter" in the grass instead of high on the wall of the house! The fireflies weren't the only beetles I saw,
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there was a large gold one and a longhorned one next to each other on the sheet. It can be pretty intimidating when these big things fly around near my head! :-0
Check out the cool antennae on this
male mosquito! They use them to detect the hum of the wings of the
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females. If you want to know what that sounds like, just listen to a high C tuning fork that has been tapped, the frequency is the same, 512 times / sec.!
Every night brings something new to the carport! It is fun to go out each night and see who comes for a visit!
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