jcochran706's Favorites

Really not sure about this. I've identified some of my previous observations as this same species, but those were more streaky overall, whereas this one just has the one prominent streak and the rest of the forewings are streakless.

1.a MPG A. howardi
1.b this observation
1.c https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/65646650
1.d https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/198591879

2.a MPG A. devexella
2.b https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/198151448
2.c https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/198153148
2.d https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/199386869
2.e https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/199017250

With Don Fraser, Clint Gibson, Tom Palmer and 13 others; my first nocturnal moth survey, organized by Virginia "Ginny" Hamilton of The Nature Conservancy. There were two moth arrays about 400 feet apart. This was the second array, set up in an open flatwoods site adjacent to a marsh. It was awesome! The number of "bugs" was overwhelming at times; by necessity, I have ignored lots of tiny to small, generic-shaped beetles and other small insects, most of which probably could not be identified by my photographs. By my count -- and I spent some time sorting through the 182 photographs of 129 records and combining images of the same (presumed) individuals -- I am submitting the following taxa from this spot (tentatively): 12 ants, 1 ant lion, 1 bee, 17 beetles, 7 "bugs," 1 cockroach, 1 dragonfly, 1 damselfly, 3 flies, 2 lacewings, 8 leafhoppers, 1 mantis, 70 (!) moths, 1 scorpion (on a fallen pine log 100 feet from the array; Clint found it with a UV light), 4 shield bugs, and 3 giant water bugs.

All of these photographs were taken with my Panasonic Lumix FZ80 (with a broken exposure setting knob) and the built-in flash. The flash worked magically for nearly every photograph.

Note: Except for a few cases, I cannot identify ANY of these species with certainty. I am relying ENTIRELY on iNat's artificial intelligence/machine learning. (Two guys from the Lakeland area, who set up this array, we very knowledgeable about moths and other insects. I could not assign many of their identifications to specific insects, and then to remember them 24 hours later as I was going through my photographs. But in many cases, iNat came up with names that I remember hearing while at the array). So, no guessing, please!

Don and I left the preserve at 2258 and headed home. I arrived at 0135 Saturday morning.