A couple of nights ago I saw a pair of two moths hanging around outside my house. In the same spot that one of them was sitting (or very close to it at least), there’s a weird discolored patch. It’s near the roof of my house so it’s difficult to tell for certain, but I suspect they may be moth eggs. Will they be safe up there? I don’t think there’s any way for me to get them down but I’m worried about them.
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Nope.
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Sometimes our insects lay their eggs on the window glass. And yet. They seem to survive.
Sheltered under the eave, yours should be fine?
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Did you post an observation?
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Hard to say. Moths will lay eggs wherever, if they need to. I’ve seen a moth on a pinning board lay eggs there, and presumably die. We had assumed it was dead, pinned it, and then the eggs in the morning. Innate behavior? Invertebrates are not like people, so perhaps some residual nerve impulses triggered the event.
In any case, if the larvae hatch, either they will find their way down to a host plant, or they won’t. It depends on their innate response. I know of no safe way to remove an egg mass without damaging the eggs. The eggs in that mass are ‘cemented’ on to the substrate.
Moths are not ‘smart’. Likely, their instinct tells them to go up. Human houses have not figured into their evolutionary pathways. And they perhaps never will. However, I don’t think there is much you can do. If you could get up there and attach some sort of container on top of them, you may be able to collect some, but might not know their preferred feeding source.
To paraphrase Robert Heinlein - the natural world is a harsh mistress.
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I don’t know why but many saturniids seem to lay eggs everywhere, including walls and windows.
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Butterflies are smarter I guess…
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One of my big frustrations re: moths is how many there are for which I can find no information on their host plant – even if I identify them. It shows one of the big shortcomings of collection-based biology: a species can be well-characterized in collections of the adults, without anyone ever having gone beyond collecting the adults.
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