This summer I've been falling absolutely in love with the Ponometia moths; they're small, they're subtle, they're elegantly streamlined and often enough, they look like poop. Bird poop. When they look like poo, they look very much like poo - and when they do not? Well, that's at the end of the post.
All of the species IDs are courtesy of Ed Knudson, photos are all Brewster Co from the Double Bacon. Some were June, most were July. Now... to the moths!
For scale, my thumb is next to Ponometia libedis: good camo for stucco!
Ponometia elegantula looks like a heavy-on-the-urates dropping:
Ponometia altera, a set of them:
Ponometia semiflava = "Half Yellow" or "Half-cloaked Midget"
...what a name. I like to think of them as semi-flavored, myself. Tastes yellow and blue. Michigan flavored? The blue is a bit too dusky for that, perhaps. Definitely not looking like a normal, healthy bird dropping.
Ponometia venustula - another ponometia that doesn't look like poop. This is a female, since the gorgeous silvery gray horseshoe is present; handy link with comparison pictures.
Now who was it that insisted that only butterflies were pretty? These little ones are just the tip of the iceberg! Happy trails to all, and to all a good summer; may it rain on you and yours. That's a blessing, at least out here!
From here on out, these guys will be stuck in my head as "Poo-nometia." Also, a nit-picky comment for a few posts down: We go to Sul Ross, not Sull Ross. Almost certainly a typo, but ah, well.
ReplyDeleteAlso: why no flies?!
<3 Millie
Millie! You're right about the typo-ease of SRSU, half the time I still say I'm at CJC (or not in school) still =X
ReplyDeleteFlies - they'll be in here just as soon as they SIT STILL! My camera and I are only ninjas in training. Last night at work there was a dear little beast that looked like a bombyliid of some sort, but not quite, and it made me sad that most of my trapping devices were elsewhere. Long schnoz, wings held to the side, teeeeny body though, reddish above. Perplexing.