Moths – Tendrils

Watching The Blueberry Crop

Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)

Eastern Towhees are here in the mountains of central Virginia year round. Their diet is primarily insects, seeds and berries and during the summer they tend, of course, to eat more insects. True bugs, beetles, ants, caterpillars, moths, millipedes, spiders and snails are all on the menu. But there’s something special to me, which I share with them. Those blueberries. This fellow is watching over them. Watching how they are growing. Watching and waiting for them to ripen. Just like I am. I wholeheartedly enjoy sharing the blueberries with the birds. For me, the berries mean pies, pancakes, muffins. For them it means breakfast, lunch and dinner. Glad to share.

Aromatic Asters

Aromatic Asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) are visited by bees, butterflies and skippers, seeking nectar and in the case of the bees, pollen. The caterpillars of moths and of Silvery Checkerspot Butterflies eat the foliage. This Crab Spider is hanging around hoping to catch some dinner, just waiting for the perfect insect to come along.

I’ve got some Aromatic Aster blooming like crazy right now. A stunning show is put on by this perennial plant.

Aromatic Asters are native to northeastern and central United States. I’m looking forward to dividing my plant in the early spring of next year. The more the merrier.

Silver-spotted Skipper Revisited

With a wingspan of 1.75 to 2.5 inches the Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus) is the largest of the skippers. But being the largest of the skippers doesn’t make it LARGE compared to some moths and butterflies.

The Silver-spotted Skipper is certainly the skipper that I see most often as I check out the trails here on my mountain and enjoy my gardens. As my Dad would say, they seem to be ubiquitous! As adults they use their long tongues or proboscices to slurp up the nectar of blue, red, pink, and purple flowers, and minerals of mud, and even animal feces.

**A Silver-spotted Skipper caterpillar.**

The primary host plant of Silver-spotter Skippers is the Black Locust Tree. Others are plants in the legume (Fabaceae) family.

The young caterpillar creates a “tent” folded in a leaf of its host plant where it spends days, venturing out at night to feed on leaves of the host plant. The host plant, often a Black Locust or Bush Clover, or False Indigo. Older caterpillars will move on to create a larger “tent” for themselves using more than one leaf.

Curve-toothed Geometer

Another nod to moths in celebrating National Moth Week (July 17-25, 2021). This moth photo was in my immense file of moth images, unidentified. Many of you might know, I love a mystery and last night I looked upon this critter as one of those mysteries. Luck was with me and I was able to figure out that this is a Curve-toothed Geometer (Eutrapela clemataria). A master of camouflage in both adult and larval form. Here, as a moth the camouflage isn’t that effective against the cedar siding, but imagine this moth in a bunch of leaves and you can appreciate how clever the coloring and shading is. The caterpillar is just as ingenious, an inch-worm disguised as a stick. A stick that loves to eat the leaves of many trees. Just a few of those trees: ash, basswood, birch, elm, fir, maple, poplar, and willow.

Common Whitetail Dragonfly

I’m constantly learning things as I dig through my books and page through various sites on the internet. One of today’s new things is the word to describe the color quality of the abdomen of a male Common Whitetail (Plathemis lydia). That word: pruinose, which means frosted in appearance. Makes me think of blueberries which have this same color quality.

But back to this fascinating dragonfly. It can be found across much of North America, including all 48 of the contiguous United States. They eat flies, midges, gnats, termites, mosquitoes, ants, small butterflies and moths, bees and other insects. And they in turn will become a meal for birds, spiders, praying mantises, robber flies and bats.

Remarkable agility, astounding to watch. Four wings that can each move independently, allows the insect to fly up, down, sideways, forward, and backward without changing its orientation. I am so fortunate to be able to see such things.

Orchard Orb-weaver Spider

A jewel toned beauty in a spider. Tiny too. Orchard Orb-weaver Spider (Leucauge). Most males are smaller than females. The males are about an eighth of an inch long. The female about a quarter inch long. Tiny.

I’ve happened upon these spiders on several visits to central Florida. I believe these are females because their bodies are about a quarter inch in length.

They are hard workers, consuming things that often are pests to us humans, such as flies, moths, beetles, wasps and mosquitoes. Some of the pests they eat are a help to farmers, pests that would otherwise damage commercial crops. Good to see them.

Eastern Fence Lizard

A cute little creature that I see climbing on the cinder block foundation of my cabin on occasion. An Eastern Fence Lizard (Sceloporus undulatus). With golden eyes that stare back at me wondering what I am.

Fence Lizards grow to be between four, and seven and a quarter inches long. Usually females are gradations of gray and males are various shades of brown, both with keeled scales. Their native range is from New York to northern Florida west to Ohio and Arkansas.

Predators of Eastern Fence lizards include snakes, birds, cats, and other reptiles. When confronted they will seek a tree, running to the opposite side circling to stay out of sight.

Eastern Fence Lizards dine on invertebrates including beetles, ants, moths, grasshoppers, spiders, and stink bugs. Oh little lizard friends, please eat lots of those Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs!

Yuccas

I love Yucca flowers. There are 2 different yucca species growing in my yard, each blooming in a different season. Yucca filamentosa, which is native to Virginia, blooms in early summer. And this one, Yucca gloriosa, native to extreme southeastern Virginia, blooms in early autumn.

Remarkable that they both are native to this state, since I wasn’t aware of the yucca plant until I moved to New Mexico many years ago. The blooms attract moths, butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. For me the blooms represent special memories of a beautiful state.