The Urban Pantheist

Urban Nature Walks happen on the last Sunday of the month--this shouldn't surprise me, but it often does. I sent out the call: is anyone else planning to walk somewhere? Fortunately my friend Teá said she was heading to Stonybrook Reservation to look for caterpillars! We ended up circumambulating Turtle Pond at a leisurely pace looking for all kinds of living things! This pair of bullfrogs is a good first sighting.

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I described this moth as "trapezoidal," but I should have called its posture "soaring hawk." Many moths in this genus Eupithecia* rest this way, sometimes hiding the second pair of wings entirely behind the first. This is another moth that spent its youth as an inchworm, this one probably grazing on the amble pollen supplied by plants in the aster family. The smart money is on this being a "common Eupithecia," E. miserulata**

*Good ape. No, really.

** hoo boy I can't figure this one

The yellow bear Spilosoma virginica* isn't nearly as well known as the woolly bear, but is nearly as widespread. The caterpillar has longer softer 'fur' (setae) and is usually all yellow (but darker forms occur). While the woolly bear is found throughout the late fall and even the winter as a caterpillar, the yellow bear pupates to survive the cold months. The caterpillar can host on almost any kind of plant, including a variety of garden plants and trees and shrubs. The moth, the Virginia tiger moth, is a pretty but unassuming white creature.



*Virginian specked-body

My moth expert friend says this is probably Coleophora,* one of a large genus of casebearer moths. The larvae of these moths spin protective cases of silk and debris, similar to the cases that aquatic caddisfly larvae make.

*Sheath-carrier

I've gotten almost foolhardy with my confidence in my network of friends who are smarter than me. This little tan moth was on my kitchen windowsill, so I photographed it, excited to see a species identification. Don't be silly! @Coolbugs was able to identify it to family Crambidae*, much better than I was able, but still one of 850 possible species in our area. I'm just happy to add the word "Crambid" to my vocabulary.


*Crambidae from type genus Crambus (Fabricius), from Greek meaning "dry, parched." Also, in Greek mythology, the child of Phineus and Cleopatra.

A bunch of the insects and other animals we saw at last week's bugblitz at Stone Zoo didn't make it into the 280 days of Urbpandemonium project. This nondescript crane fly deserves its own post, but I've no idea what it is beyond infraorder Tipulamorpha. Lovely and perfectly harmless, like most insects.

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Certain members of the moth night event decided this was a battle scarred female warrior, battered but not beaten. They weren't wrong, as far as I can tell. She has that Geometridae wing posture that I mentioned with the last moth I posted. At this point I can say yes, it's a female and yes, she's a Geometrid. I'll even go so far as to agree with the expert who said she's Besma quercivoraria*, since that looks right to me. Battle-scarred? Perhaps. Something bit the crap out of her left hindwing, and here she is at our moth light, making me wonder what she is--that's a kind of victory.

* I can't for the life of me figure out what "besma" means. I'll throw it out to the entomologists, librarians, and language scholars who are reading this. The rest of it means "she eats oak." Sure, why not?

I asked for an identification for this one on the Mothing in Massachusetts Facebook group, and who should answer, but coolbugs! Her answer was, "It's either yellow-fringed Dolichomia (Dolichomia olinalis*) or the one that looks just like [it]." When I dug a little deeper on that, I realized that she meant that this moth could be the very similar looking moth by the common name clover hayworm. Also, I discovered that Bugguide was calling the "yellow-fringed Dolichomia" by a new scientific name Hypsopygia olinalis**. Coolbugs, an experienced insect identifier who has memorized hundreds of scientific names, replied "blerg." I feel that.

For what it's worth, the subtle characters of the moth's coloring made another commenter suggest that olinalis was the proper identification. Both species are found in our area, but the larva of the hayworm feeds on dried vegetation (makes sense) while the "Dolichomia" larva feeds on oak.

* The light, long one

** High-assed light one

For much of the moth night, this was the largest and most impressive moth at the light. But the moth experts (coolbugs, eumorphadream, and a guy named Kirk) kept looking at it and saying, oh that. Because it was the biggest moth there, every new person who encountered it said hey what's that big one?? And the moth experts would say, oh that. It's a "large yellow underwing" Noctua pronuba.* Why the disappointed reaction? They seemed excited at the prospect of other "underwings" showing up.

This underwing is an introduced invasive pest, an entirely different genus from North American underwings. This one has actually appeared on this journal before--but as a caterpillar. As a larva it is a garden pest called a cutworm--a caterpillar that overwinters, waking in spring to march across the waking earth cutting all the new growth down to nothing. Still it's kind of pretty as a moth.

* Night owl for the bride

The common tan wave Pleuroprucha insulsaria* has probably become much more "common," that is to say abundant, since humans drastically changed the landscape of North America. Its larva is an inchworm, a familiar group of caterpillars that mostly feed on the leaves and needles of various trees. This species also likes to eat a number of weedy plants that human activity favors: goldenrod, smartweed, sumac. But field observations and experiments show a much more preferred food source--corn silk. They don't eat enough to be considered a serious economic pest, but appear to be the only member of the Geometridae family to feed on the top US crop.

* I am vexed by this one. "Pleuro" means "side." "Prucha" doesn't appear in any of my references, but pops up as a German surname here and there. The genus was named by a German entomologist, but he died in 1888 and we can't ask him what he meant. "Insulsaria" literally means "unsalted" and probably is meant to convey "foolish" in this instance.