{"id":39374,"date":"2025-07-18T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=39374"},"modified":"2025-07-18T00:18:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T04:18:17","slug":"estate-find-xxix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/07\/estate-find-xxix\/","title":{"rendered":"Estate Find XXIX"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hadn’t found anything too exciting this week and was resigned to having to post something banal (even though I’d found some great stuff off<\/em> of the property,) but I took one last pass around the environs late last night to see what I might scare up. And indeed, scared up something, though if I’d been more leery of being out at night, it might have scared me up instead;<\/strong> the headlamp picked out a brilliant red reflection several meters ahead of me, and no mere pinpoint either – this one had a noticeable diameter to it. I endeavored to reproduce what I’d seen, though it’s imperfect.<\/p>\n

\"reflection
It doesn’t show very well in this image, but the reflection was distinctly red, which usually means, ‘moth,’ though occasionally in other habitats it means ‘alligator.’ The former was correct in this case, in a big way.<\/p>\n

\"red
Much closer to the color rendition, though it isn’t half as bright as I was seeing;<\/strong> the headlamp is very close to my eyes so the reflection is very direct, which is harder to do with a flash unit and the wider surface area of a lens (it’s technical.) But then I went in for the detail before it got scared off.<\/p>\n

\"head-on
I first thought “luna moth,” since they’re about this size, though generally brighter in color. But that proboscis ruled it out quickly, since adult lunas only live to reproduce (for a mere few days) and don’t eat – they don’t even have the anatomy to do so. I’m purposefully keeping you in suspense, because I certainly didn’t know what it was until I unloaded some of the detailed pics and searched BugGuide.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"newly
Given that it was very close to the ground and those wings didn’t seem fully formed, I was surmising that this was newly emerged from its chrysalis and drying out its wings, which turned out to be correct. You have to admit, those wings don’t look very capable here. Yet the coloration that was hinted at was better than expected when I maneuvered around behind it.<\/p>\n

\"dorsal
That… is a pretty badass pattern, and it was enough to identify it easily:<\/strong> this is the wonderfully-named Pandora sphinx (Eumorpha pandorus<\/em>.) The tattered appearance of the trailing edge of the primary wings is natural, probably helping it blend in with damaged leaves. Their food, as larvae, consists of peppervines (don’t think we have them here,) grape vines (those<\/em> we have,) and Virginia creeper (ditto, in abundance.) So we might expect to see more of these in the future.<\/p>\n

I left it alone after that first round of pics to let it dry out and fully extend those wings, planning to return when it was fully-formed. Meanwhile, I identified it and found out some more of its habits, including what the chrysalis looked like, so on my return I could look for it.<\/p>\n

\"small
The tiny sapling that it was clinging to didn’t take long to search, and neither did the ground underneath:<\/strong> no sign of a chrysalis. Meanwhile, the moth had closed up its fully-formed wings.<\/p>\n

\"newly
I was glad I’d gotten the detailed pics earlier, but could I convince it to open up without frightening it off? I made small overtures, prodding it very gently, and it was easier than I thought.<\/p>\n

\"dorsal
Man, what a pattern! I’m gonna paint my car like that.<\/p>\n

But what do we have for the scale, Johnny? Show us how big it is.<\/p>\n

Okay.<\/p>\n

\"newly
Does that work?<\/p>\n

That was quite a bit of luck last night, finding something new and unique at the last moment, so to speak, and<\/em> being able to get such detailed pics. Something bad must be about to happen…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hadn’t found anything too exciting this week and was resigned to having to post something banal (even though I’d found some great stuff off of the property,) but I took one last pass around the environs late last night to see what I might scare up. And indeed, scared up something, though if I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[8205,8206,8207,8204],"class_list":["post-39374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-eumorpha-pandorus","tag-eye-reflections","tag-newly-emerged-adult","tag-pandora-sphinx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}