Moth
I don’t know what kind of moth this is; I figured I’d post it and let you guys have a gander. These critters love to hang out in my lawn, of all places. They hold very still until you get too close, then flit away ten or fifteen feet. It’s amazing how they just vanish when they hit the grass. They look just like a dead stem or piece of straw.
The other thing I find so fascinating about this moth is that it has no trouble perching head-down. I don’t know if that was how it chanced to land this time, or if it does that every time, using body geometry for camouflage.
Slowly getting the site back onto an even keel. It's nice to get back into the old posting rhythm.
tceisele said,
August 2, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
We see little moths like this in the lawn all the time, too. If it isn’t this one, it’s at least a close relative. They are evidently related to the “indian meal moth”, which we periodically get infesting our house (we bought a bag of cheap birdseed from Walmart that was infested, and once they hatched out, we never quite got rid of them again).
Incidentally, anybody who wants to get pictures into Bug Guide that are unique, only needs to concentrate on little guys like this one. The majority of bug photographers look for big, colorful, or unusual insects, and the relatively small and/or nondescript (yet common) ones like this mostly don’t get photographed.
David Brady said,
August 2, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
I’ve been lax in submitting things to bugguide, for a number of reasons. It just now occurred to me, however, that I need to start submitting images to them to help them and not just for ID. Thanks for the paradigm shift, tceisele!