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Names of things
Coming from birding, taxonomical names for Lepidoptera suddenly take on a whole new significance. Bird identification is easy (sorry, fellow birders but it really is). Pop to your local bookstore and you’ll find an wealth of field guides to help out. Or forget the whole “book” thing (it’s so passé): download an app or go…
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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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Mystery moths
Here’s a few moths from this year that I couldn’t identify. At the monthly BC Leps meeting we usually set aside some time to pore over some puzzlers. These’ll be my contributions for the next meeting. (1) Osoyoos, July 29th – the night of the town fire Eucosma or Pelochrista, perhaps. Great colouration. (2). Fort…
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Basic Taxonomy
Sheesh, this blog is only 2 weeks old and this post is already 6 months overdue. Joke! I’m trying to keep everything here as readable as possible, but now I’ve written a few posts, I’m finding it hard not to use the odd technical term. And while I can keep adding footnotes to explain them,…
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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…
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Techniques to attract moths
I initially got into moths courtesy of my house’s outside lights. I’d been photographing everything living thing I encountered to put on iNat, so the moths that congregated at my lights each night were a particularly tantalizing target. Before I knew it I was hooked and ordered a black light to try to attract more.…
