One of the prettiest moths I have seen, Crysocale regalis from Owlet Lodge in Bongará Province, Peru.
Wow, that is beautiful! I’m planning on moving to Peru (or Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, or Bolivia) in two years. One of the big reasons is the biodiversity combined with my love of macro photography! Being limited to taking pictures of frozen bugs nine months out of the year in Wyoming is getting old!
Last week I was walking through a local garden and saw this on the bottom of a tree trunk. To tell you the truth, I was just starting to bend down to pick up what I thought was a scrap of black paper before I realized it was a moth! Later I learned that it’s called the Black Zale.
For ID purposes, I pushed up the detail in the black a bit.
Got to see quite a fair bit of moths on a himalayan trek recently - and I must say, I was not expecting the high-altitude variety!!
Names along with observations (in left-right, left-right order)
- Triangles https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/365634839
- Calliteara strigata https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/365635274
- Gazalina chrysolopha https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/365635385
- Cyana adita https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/365635804
- Teldenia specca (i might be wrong) https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/365635822
- Hesudra divisa https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/365634894
Which book is this?
Pretty darn good without photostacking!
Himalayan? Okay, repeat to self: I am not jealous. I am not jealous. I am not jealous. (Continue repeating until it becomes true).
Butterflies and Moths DK Handbook!
After several nights mothing, updated results!
Bird Poop: Least Carpet, I think?
Large Friend: So many Dark Arches (this obs has two!)
Gets Wifi: This Black Arches (entirely different from the above Dark Arches)
Beautiful Pattern, Probably: Either the same leafminer, or this tiny nepticulid moth
Impossible to ID: One of my small ermine moths (there’s several that look basically identical as adults)
The One with the Thing: Answer unchanged
Stuffed Toy: this Wood Leopard Moth
Dizzyingly Complex: answer unchanged
Ooh, Green: Emerald Moth (sadly unphotographed, since it didn’t settle down before fluttering off back into the night)
This moth I saw, it has transparent wings, it doesn’t looks like a moth, but the identify shows a moth species.
Observation link: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/357442134
Happy Moth Week 2026! I know for some people (and moths) week is Moth Week, but this is still a special occasion. I’ll say that it did motivate me to climb up under the eaves to photograph some moths I normally wouldn’t have photographed.
Does anyone have special plans to photograph extra moths this week??
Cheers!
Yup, and I’m joining 2 projects:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/vermont-moth-blitz-2026
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/national-moth-week-2026
Mostly what I do is turn on my porch lights for about a half hour and see who lands on the wall. (Then I turn the lights off so I won’t torment them all night.) Last year I observed more than 80 species that way…
I love moths! Although I’m quite the beginner when it comes to identifying them. I really want to set up some moth lights to attract some locally and record what I see; but I’m still trying to figure out how to do that properly without causing indirect harm on accident. I think my favorite moth that’s local to my area is the Black Witch Moth (South TX Gulf).
Went out on the porch last night for about 20 min. Saw at least 20 species, including these beautiful lifers:
In celebration of the diversity of moths, here’s some interesting info about micromoths, the moths that are mostly smaller than a floating dandelion seed:
“Multiple, sequential micromoth habitats exist even on a single, tough live oak leaf. When that leaf is first produced early in the spring, it is home to a micromoth larva—a leaf miner. This flattened caterpillar moves in two-dimensional space through its paper-thin domain, tunneling steadily until high summer darkens the leaf with tannins too toxic to feed upon. When the leaves are shed, brown and etched with the fading traceries of the early season miners, another micromoth is waiting on the ground for them, a forager on oak deadfall. Beneath the layer of fallen leaves there lives a third micromoth species with another unique specialization, feeding on the leaves that fell last year and that are by now flattened to detritus by the intervening winter. Farther down still lives yet another species that feeds on the fungus growing on the disintegrating leaves from the year before that.
In the wild wood the micromoth habitats are manifold. There are micromoths that mature from egg to adult within owl pellets; others, on coyote scat or under rotting bark or feeding on knots of spent spider web. Some live on bird droppings within bird nests or in the wax within beehives or on deserted paper wasp nests. Others live in mouse holes, eating shed fur. One micromoth explores through the darkness seeking out leaves zipped together in silk by macromoth caterpillars that have since departed. In the silk that micromoth leaves a microscopic egg, which will hatch into a tiny larva that feeds on the frass left behind…”
- Threads from the Web of Life, by Stephen Daubert
Happy national moth week! I found some kind of as-yet-unidentified Sphinx moth, but i feel pretty confident that it’s a lifer for me, whatever it is!
What’s not to love about a moth called “Small bird-dropping moth” that looks like … you guessed it