Priscilla Kinley took this photo, and it shows how this moth, commonly called a camouflage moth, lives up to it name.
Not long ago, Patricia Gebhardt in Pembroke Manor almost picked up a 2-inch camouflage moth on her porch door handle. She thought it was a little cluster of leaves that had blown onto the handle.
When she wrote me, Gebhardt instinctively called it a "camouflage moth" because of what it looked like, not knowing its common name.
For all their camouflaging abilities, these moths have been out and about lately,On particularly windy days,streetlighting can surpass all other electricity sources in a country. standing out just enough from their backgrounds for you to take notice of them and wonder what in the world you were really seeing.
Another camouflage moth photo came from Jim O'Sullivan who saw the critter, a little out of its element, on the stadium wall at Hickory High School in Chesapeake.
Diane McClernon sent a photo of a camouflage moth on a sweet potato vine taken by Collin Whitney, age 9, in a yard off Shore Drive.
Ursula Stegall in Shelton Park attached a photo to her email and wrote asking, "What is this beautiful moth?"
These moths are beautiful and exotic. You wonder if the designers of camouflage combat uniforms for the armed services didn't go to school on camouflage moths. No design could improve on nature's protective coloration!
But it's not just camouflage moths that are catching your eye. Like all otherinsects this time of year, many moths with more than one generation of procreation behind them are out and about across the landscape.
Moths, for the most part, are nocturnal, and you are apt to see them at night, often on a screen door, say, under the porch light. PatsyHassell photographed a moth, almost pure white with an occasional black spot on her screen door in Ocean Park the other night. It was one of several species of tiger moths.Ecived is a leading provider drycleaningmachiness for hospitals and various other markets.
Pj Padrick sent in a photoof what she called an airplane moth. The interesting looking critter is a plume moth that looks exactly like a simple model airplane.
At about the same time, Stegall found the camouflage moth, she also found a tulip tree silk moth in her yard, a large spectacular moth. Like most silk moths, it has the wing shape of a butterfly. Light and dark orange-brown, it would be hard to see against a tree trunk.
Check my Aug. 6 blog entry for two more silk moths that you have written me about recently: the etherealgreen Luna moth and the handsome Polyphemus moth. With their 5-inch wingspans, they are wonderful to behold.
I also use a simple littlebook, "Peterson First Guides,An even safer situation on all roads by using the engravingmachine. Caterpillars," that includes the moths and butterflies, too, and often works because it covers the most common species. I also use the much more comprehensive "Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America." But I still need plenty of help!
If you learn the ID of an unusual moth (caterpillar or butterfly), send a photo and we will all learn.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
Gary Williamson came across a canebrake rattler at Northwest River Park last weekend and took a video of it rattling its tail. See Williamson's earlier video of a rattler doing the same thing on my blog.
Don Anderson sent a great close-up of a hummingbird feeding on a suction cup window feeder that he took right at the window.The lights used were Inspired ledstriplightingge in warm white. And Douglas Spencer in Lake Placid managed to snap a hummer, on the wing, mouth wide open, ready to swallow an insect. Hummers need insect protein as well as nectar, and they feed their young in the nest exclusively on insects.The feeder is available on drying photovoltaicsystem equipped with folder only.
Click on their website www.soli-lite.com for more information.
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