80AcresOnline

There’s a site that will generate imaginary moths if you retweet its Twitter account (@mothgenerator) and tweet you an image of the same.   I thought it would be fun to see if I could get it to do an 80-acres moth.  And it did.   Turns out whatever message you send that account turns into a moth named whatever you sent, with “the” in front and “moth” after.  Here’s the 80 acres moth

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R- found a tall blooming plant Saturday, June 18, that he didn’t recognize: a colony growing  in the creek woods, in the ‘swamp’ area, now very wet again.  There’s a kind of “sandbar” (except it’s not sand, but alluvial mix from flash floods including black clay)  that gets midday sun.  He found a colony of these, 4 feet and more tall, and since he didn’t have a camera with him, he pulled the shortest one to bring back and show me.  It was about four feet.  By the time it got back to the house, it was fairly limp, the main stalk actually broken.  I snipped it short enough to fit in a pitcher, hoping it would perk up.  Some of the pictures were taken shortly after that; over time it did regain turgor so this morning I set it outside for a bit and took more pictures.

Clearly Mint Family–square stem, opposite leaves, flower shape.

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Because of time constraints (working on copy edits for new book) and weather, the brief walk on the land Saturday didn’t produce any usable bird pictures and I didn’t see any snakes or lizards, but I did see wildlife, large and small:

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I mentioned back a few posts that May 23, the day of the weird beetle in the bathroom, had also produced a weird moth in the kitchen…and I forgot, until I was at BugGuide looking at some of my images to see if something “new” was really “old”, that May 23, also produced the pretty spot-winged fly on the skeleton plant flower.

Now that I have an ID for the moth, a Yellow-fringed Dolichomia, Dolichomia olinalis I think, though mine was larger than the typical size listed.

The contrast of the distinctly rosy-brown, glossy wings with their subtle patterns and the dull-yellow fringe is beautiful.    The larvae feed on oak trees, and since we have oak trees of several species, I’m fairly confident this moth is reproducing here.

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Besides the pretty pictures aspect (and I enjoy the pretty pictures, both taking them and seeing them online), photography has multiple uses that support wildlife and land management.  For instance…I’m almost at the pond and a weakly-flying near-dragonfly-sized insect flies up and lands on the underside of a small limb.   I can’t, with my eyesight, see it clearly.  I know it’s not a dragonfly, butterfly, or moth, but what is it?  If  I get too close it will fly away.

Enter the camera with a zoom lens:

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