Backyard Beetles & Moths

Imperial Moth

My brother, who has been coming to the Pine Barrens for more than 30 years for lepidoptery and other insects (beetles, mostly), set up his lights and sheets in our backyard last night to do some mothing. While he was setting up, I told him the story about Vladmir Nabokov's novel, Bend Sinister. Nabokov, who was, in addition to being one of the greatest, if not the greatest, writer of the 20th century, was also an expert lepidopterist and he often inserted references to moths and butterflies in his work. The last line of the novel is, "A good night for mothing." In the first edition of the book, the copy editor, never having seen the word, changed it to "A good night for nothing."  

Harry said that people who bird are of course, "birders," but people who go mothing have a hard time since they don't want to be confused with "mothers." 

His mothing array wasn't very elaborate: two sheets, one draped over our picnic table, the other over a couple of chairs, a pair of ultra-violet lights and an incandescent 180-watt bulb, a very long extension cord, and he was all set. He also went into the woods in back and smeared bait on the trees. The bait is a mixture of beer, fermented bananas, brown sugar and, I think, molasses. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, like bait for fishing. Last night, it didn't work. 

Polyphylla variolosa

As soon as it got dark, we had some activity, though at first, they were mostly beetles. There were two kinds of rather large beetles, both of which would go under the rubric June bug, though, as Harry pointed out, that's like saying "warbler" or "sparrow." It doesn't tell you much. Harry doesn't traffic much in common names, but the interesting beetle to him, and me, was Polyphylla variolosa, with big, feathery antennae. There are only two representatives of this genus, I believe he said, on the east coast, and this is the one you'll find in the Pine Barrens. 

He went to check his bait and I heard him call out "Ho ho," and what he came back with was not a moth, but a caterpillar that he called a "filament" something or other because of the long spike protruding from its thorax. They feed on greenbrier, of which there is plenty to feed on around here. Since he found it on the bark of a tree, he suspects it was looking for a place to pupate. It will now pupate in Westchester County, NY. 

"Filament caterpillar"

Not many moths were showing up on the sheet. I was amazed at how many of the Polyphylla we were attracting, but the one species of moth he found interesting was a Gracilis Underwing, an example of which I remembered seeing on the Wawa wall before they renovated and changed the lights. Around 11 he left for his motel, but he left the lights on. At 5:30 this morning he was back to see what had come in overnight. To me, it just looked like a smattering of uninteresting little insects, but to him, those nondescript moths are very interesting. He also told me that you have to carefully look underneath the drapes and folds of the sheet, because they often work their way in there. Sure enough, when he took the sheet off the two chairs, there on the seat, was a beauty of an Imperial Moth. And then, from underneath the table, he extracted a perfect specimen of an Apple Sphinx Moth. Along with the rare fly he found last night, he was pretty happy with his haul, since of the 3 families of moths he is most interested in, he'd found an example of each.

Apple Sphinx Moth

And then he found the really interesting moth, sitting inside the lip of his lamp. At first he thought it was Cactoblastis cactorum, but what surprised him was that its range map doesn't include New Jersey. It turned out to be Melitara prodenialis.  The caterpillars of this moth feed on prickly pear cactus, of which, again, there is plenty of around here.  There are other records of this moth in New Jersey, but not a lot, and oddly, there is a gap between NJ and North Carolina where the moth has not been recorded. Obviously, prickly pear is all along that stretch. If nothing else, if my brother hasn't come across one in his decades of mothing in New Jersey, you can be sure it is rare.

And right in my own backyard. 

Melitara prodenialis

Large Maple Spanworm