Found what appears to be an exceedingly rare moth...on the wall at the entrance to the men's bath house at the National Science Camp. Who knew?
Thanks to @muscadine for identifying this for me. Couldn't find it anywhere (including on iNat search).
Ambushing Anaxyrus.
Legspan slightly more than 2 inches.
(Assuming the last two photos are of the same individual as the previous photos - I released her after photographing her, but she seemed to have climbed into my backpack and came with me home! Guess she'll be my new pet :)
Attracted to UV lights
I always called them Packardia geminata, and then changed it to
Packardia albipunctata
(dark hind wings). Now apparently it's back to geminata.
Mating pair as found on my sheet.
This is the female, wingless, white-marked Tussock moth. Life cycle here:
https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/viewSpecies.php?species=2527
If you look closely at the zoomed in photo, it looks like her side has split open and an eye is peering out. I can't find any reference that would explain what I think I'm seeing in this photo.
Anyone?
I found this caterpillar on one of my orange trees 26 November and have has it in covered container since. It eats a little but hasn't seemed th have chaged in size or appearance until yesterday when it seems to have shed its skin. Perhaps a little spikier but hard to see any difference. Colour difference is probably due to lighting rather than the specimen. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/142880955.
Moth emerged 11 Apr23
body length 13 mm; not sure of host, larva was found on ground near Acacia and other plants
Stinging Rose Caterpillar (Parasa indetermina) Contacting this slug caterpillar causes a painful sting and the contact spot eventually swells and remains painful for hours or days. Fortunately this is a rare caterpillar.
White Flannel Moth, Norape ovina (Sepp, 1848), and Saddleback Caterpillar Moth, Acharia stimulea (Clemens, 1860), caterpillars feeding on Eastern Redbud. Both stinging caterpillars. Near Brentsville, Virginia, USA. Photo by David L. Govoni ©2017.
BugGuide: bugguide.net/node/view/33365
BaMoNA: www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Norape-ovina
EoL: eol.org/pages/381453/overview
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norape_ovina
BugGuide: bugguide.net/node/view/507
BaMoNA: www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Acharia-stimulea
EoL: eol.org/pages/10447645/overview
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddleback_caterpillar
on some kind of bramble leaf
On underside of hickory leaf, 1.6 meters up.
A good friend of ours, Stan Malcolm called me this morning to let me know that he had found an Isa textual caterpillar. He regularly walks along the air line trail and is an experienced naturalist, entomologist and photographer. You can visit his blog at: www.performance-vision.com/airline/index.htm
Specimen was imaged live, stack of 85 images.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Please download and use our open source images for your own purposes. If you do, please reference Macroscopic Solutions.
All of the images in our database were captured with the Macropod by Macroscopic Solutions. www.macroscopicsolutions.com
Click here to see a brief video about Macroscopic Solutions and the Macropod.
Click here to see a brief description about the Macropod.
Click here to see instructional videos about our techniques.
The Macropod is a rigid, portable photomacrography system, which allows the user to make razor sharp, fully focused photographs of small sized specimens at 18 to 26-megapixel resolution. It overcomes the extreme Depth of Field (DOF) limitations inherent in optics designed to image smaller specimens. Normally, lenses designed for macro will only render a very small fraction of the depth of targeted specimen in sharp focus at any one exposure. The Macropod allows the user to select and make multiple exposures in precise increments along the Z-axis (depth) such that each exposure’s area of sharp focus overlaps with the previous and next exposure. These source images are then transferred to a computer and merged by an image-stacking program. The stacking program (Zerene Stacker by Rik Littlefield) finds and stitches together only the focused pixels from each exposure into one image. The Macropod integrates industry-leading components in a novel and elegant way to achieve these results.
Contact information:
Mark Smith
mark@macroscopicsolutions.com
410 258 6144
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
(Isa textula) Indian Springs WMA, Kuhns Ridge Road, Washington County, Maryland. September 17, 2021. On hickory.
Found on Black Cherry, a photo of host leaf is included at end.
Skiff moth caterpillar with the tip of the parasitic fly's abdomen (with spiracles presumably) sticking through the fresh caterpillar skin.
On red oak sapling. Late instar. About 0.3 meters up.
under a Redbud leaf.
2nd photo is 3 days later - 6/13/22.
3rd photo - 6/15/22
4th photo - 6/23/22
photos 5-11: 1 May 2023, I don't know when the moth emerged, I had given up on it.
Found on Cedar Elm. Wasn't moving, so I figured it was parasitized. Collected to see what would eventually emerge. Caterpillar eventually continued to eat and pupate.