Category: Macromoths
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Golden, BC, May-June 2025 – Part 1: Macros
Home at last! I’m back from a 5 week trip to Golden BC. En route, I stayed in Merritt and Salmon Arm setting up traps at both locations, but the bulk of my time was spent mothing around Golden. Today I got some time to crunch through my observations, so here’s a quick trip summary…
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Macroglossinae
This is last of 3 posts on the subfamilies of the BC Sphingidae, the sphinx moths. There are 11 species in this subfamily in two tribes. Like my other posts on the Sphingidae, this’ll be a little light on photographs for now. I’ve only seen 4 members of this group. Dilophonotini The Hemaris are a…
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Sphinginae
The previous post tackled the Smerinthinae, a subfamily of the Sphingidae. This post looks at another: the Sphinginae. There are 9 species reported here in BC, though Agrius cingulata and Lapara bombycoides are unlikely to be seen – see below. I’ve only seen 4 species at this point, so this post will have a few…
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Smerinthinae
Let’s take a look at a subfamily of the Sphingidae (sphinx moths), the Smerinthinae. There are 6 species in the province, but iNat has a tantalizing 7th that was reported, incongruously out of range, somewhere in the Cariboo. Assuming the identification is correct it’s probably safe to say it arrived via anthropocentric means. But the…
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Lasiocampidae
Alrighty! Let’s take a look at another not-so-well-represented lepidoptera family in BC. Reviewing taxons like this helps stave off the fact that the only moths outside the last few weeks are sodding Operophtera. Like, seriously: no other species whatsoever. Zilch. This has been a bleak Christmas. I need a flight to the tropics, stat. The…
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Saturniidae
Let’s look at one of the more flamboyant families: the giant silk moths. There are ~2300 species globally but we have only 7 here in BC, found in two subfamilies, the Hemileucinae and Saturniinae. Our moths have a wing size of 60-140mm, but in the tropics some species get up to twice as large (280mm).…
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Coping with weight
I remember seeing my first Cyanothus silk moth (Hyalophora euryalus) on my front door a few years back. It was close enough to the ground that our idiot dog may gotten curious and accidentally done it some harm, so I moved it to a nearby tree. Once I got it onto my warm hand it…
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Drepanidae
Merry Christmas! What could possibly be more festive than examining a family in the Lepidoptera order to see what species are present in BC, Canada? I agree: nothing whatsoever. So let’s look at the Drepanidae, the false owlets and hooktip moths. I’ve seen the bulk of the 11-odd species found in BC, but the radical…
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Terms to confuse you
One of the oddities in Lepidoptera-speak is the macro/micro distinction. As you’d expect from the name, micromoths are typically small and macromoths are typically big. But 10 seconds later you find out that there are some truly giant micromoths, which makes you wonder what numbskull chose the terms in the first place. So what’s the…
BC Moths 