May beauty!

  

Wow!  When Claire started to ask me if I could help with a moth i.d. today (1 May 2025), I had no idea she would be taking me to see this beautiful Ceonothus Silkmoth (Hyalophora euryalus)!

Claire and Emma spotted this amazing moth while they were eating lunch.  It was cool at the coast today and the moth was very still, so we were able to get some nice photos.

Here's a close-up of her very fuzzy body, including the wonderful striped pattern on her abdomen:

 

 

 

Eric captured a nice view of the markings along the wing margins:

 

 

 

 

Zooming in, it just gets better:

 

 

 

 

And here's the apex of the forewing, with pretty rose-pink coloring and the oval spot with its little crescent moon:

 

 

 

 

You can even see the scales making up the oval spot:

 

 

 

Welcome to May!

 

With many thanks to Claire and Emma for spotting this beauty, and to Eric for most of the nice close-ups!

Whorls of spines

  

We worked the low tides in Monterey County during the last couple of days.  Here's a fun caterpillar we encountered along the trail this morning (29 May 2024).  My guess is Western Sheep Moth (Hemileuca eglanterina), but let me know if I'm wrong!

Into the night

  

I know I showed a White-lined Sphinx Moth (Hyles lineata) photo not too long ago (see "Lined up" on 13 August 2023), but that one had washed up on the beach and tonight we had a beautiful moth fly into our house.  Eric caught it and when we went to release it outside it sat on his fingers for a couple of minutes.

I haven't worked with sphinx moths up close, so it was interesting to see their antennae.  Above you can see that the antennae taper towards the outer tips and then are hooked at the very end.  And in the photo below you can see that the antennae are lamellate on the ventral side, with lots of fine divisions:

 

 

This one flew off into the night, but now I want to see another one up close!  Photographed in Cotati on 18 August 2023.

Lined up

  

I'm guessing some of you have been seeing these moths recently, perhaps visiting flowers in your yard?  This is a White-lined Sphinx Moth (Hyles lineata).

I've received several reports and questions about them, and yesterday I noticed this one washed up in the wrack line on the beach.  (Sometimes that happens to insects — my guess is that they're dispersing but then end up too far out to sea and wash up with the drift.)

This moth was still alive — here it is crawling on my hand:

 

 

You can see that this is a medium-sized moth — with a wingspan of ~3.5" (~9 cm) across.  That's smaller than the larger silk moths, but larger than many other moth species.  Because White-lined Sphinx Moths hover at flowers for nectar, they can be mistaken for hummingbirds from a distance.  [Anna's Hummingbirds have a wingspan of ~4.5" (~10 cm).]

Here's another quick photo for scale: