Teach Me Something New

Every day in the piney woods is exciting. You never know what interesting people, places, things and critters you will encounter. Now that it is spring, all I have to do is step outside to enjoy another marvel of nature. Nature is always there – morning, noon and night. When I see something new, I must stop, watch and identify.

‘Come forth into the light of things. Let nature be your teacher.’ 

William Wordsworth

Last night as I was reading, strange little sounds were coming from the screen on my open window. Going outside with the flashlight, I saw a unique moth. Now I love nature - a lot. But that doesn’t mean I was going to stand in the cold with a flashlight, an iPhone app and a moth ID book to try to find out who this little guy was. So, I was hoping it would still be here in the morning and sure enough, it was and several friends had joined it on the screen. After many hours of trying to pin down the species of moth, I turned to my friend, Sonnia, who knows almost all things nature for the ID. And, she came through!

Sonnia

Lettered Sphinx Moth

Courtesy of the Bug Guy

So what we have here is the Lettered Sphinx moth, Deidamia inscriptum. Having the word sphinx in the name, you will recognize other members of its family – the Hummingbird and Clearwing moths. The Lettered belongs to the Sphingidae family of moths (Lepidoptera) which includes about 1,450 species. You will know their caterpillar as the hornworm.  The Lettered is one of the earliest sphinx moths to emerge in the spring. That is what confused my ID. I mean – what moth is out when evening temps are still in the upper 30’s?

Black/white spot

Looking at the outer margin of the wing you see that it is deeply scalloped. The top is light brown with dark brown markings and there is a small black and white spot near the tip. The top of the hindwing is orange-brown with a dark brown outer margin. Males rest with their abdomen strongly curved upward. Show off! 

Pheromone plume

Females lay translucent green eggs on the leaves of host plants grape (Vitas), Peppervine (Ampelopsis arborea), and Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus). Also, the females call at night and the males fly into the wind to pick up and track the pheromone plume. Double show off!

Cecil

So gentle readers let Nature be your teacher. Stop, look, listen! Find a good source of identification books, apps or internet sites. Or, better yet, find great go-to friends like Sonnia and Cecil. Memorize! Become a life-long learner! We can never learn all that Nature has to teach us but we can always learn something new.

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