Mothing Success, But Not In Identifying ...
The second outing with experienced moth-ers Amzapp and Ellen5 was a success, not only with the black light but with insects drawn to low power trail lights and additionally examining a long dimly-lit masonry wall with flashlights. Lot o' critters out, and multiple ways of attracting or finding them. (Did I disclose any secret techniques? Oh, well.)
But the process does not end with seeing and photographing. It ends with correctly identifying. And here I break down. Love Indomitable Melipotlis for the name and easy ID, and the Five Spotted Hawk Moth for the easy ID, but it is rough going with other moths. Or with most insects.
Looking over my observations in morning light I see that I uploaded the same photo twice, once identifying it as a Texas Gray and again as a Drab Brown Wave. This is worse than plants! I need to go back and check everything!
Observations
Photos / Sounds
What
Five-spotted Hawk Moth (Manduca quinquemaculatus)Observer
thebarkDescription
Drawn to Amzapp's black light.
Comments
Agreed on all points! This is why i admire Lena so much. (One of the reasons)
At least in theory, ID help is available here. It may take some patience.
And you can go regional and look around at what other folks are sighting, you might find a few you recognize in that lineup
Here's you, currently number 7 in the state: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/national-moth-week-2018-texas?tab=observers
Go Barry! You're a pro!
IDing moths is tough. I'll help with yours as soon as I get a grasp on what mine are. Then Ellen usually comes through and catches all my mistakes and oversights (she has great patience and attention to detail). Sometime within the next few years one of the pro-mothers will come through and provide an additional level of clarity. It's a long, slow process.
At least you have detail! My moths are painted beige. With a roller.
A number of that evening's observations were first iNat onservations for Lubbock County, if not for a wider area. I got excited about the whip scorpion Amzapp found, but that was one of many.
Which has to do more with the popularity and lack of popularity of some taxa. As Jack Black said in the movie "The Big Year," "Everybody loves birds." Everybody watches birds and reports birds to iNat. Post a pic of a bird here and there is a stampede to identify it. Creepy-crawlies, not so much. Creepy-crawlies, not at all.
Between the 3 of us, we're building up a nice repertoire of expertise of creepy crawlie things that live here. Looking forward to seeing what you two uncover in your explorations. There is always something new lurking somewhere.
Does competitive mothing have a shot at becoming an Olympic sport?
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos
Insects are the great unexplored frontier.They are seductive, and some of them are venomous, and many many many of them all look alike.
Insects: not for weenies.
It was fun. Definitely I'll never look at a moth the same way again. Amazingly, maybe 5-10% of my IDs have held up. Good enough for me.
I understand the technique now, thanks to Amzapp & Ellen5, and can try it by myself.
The variety of small and unrecognized life down at Tahoka Lake Pasture is awesome.
Probably more than that have held up :-) iNat's suggested IDs for moths is still weak, and is leading us both astray,
I wish those California developers would get their butts over here and notice how crappy that thing is
Doesn't the iNat ID software learn by experience AI fashion?
Haha -- yep, to photo a moth is the fun part, and the ID part is not always as fun. :) In places where there isn't massive amounts of moths being observed, the suggestion feature of iNat will still need some bulking up. It's a work in progress -- as you observe and document more, it learns more -- but it can be a somewhat slow process. :)
In the meantime, some of the moths just rest at the order/family/genus level for a bit.
I use the Moth Photography Group plate walkthrough to get some guidance too:
http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/WalkThroughIndex.shtml
@sambiology , we'd be honored if you rallied the troops to look at some of our moths. I've been trying to help folks with IDs too, but don't recognize as many as I wish. I suspect folks won't recognize ours as well, but any skilled pair of eyes that help catch errors and oversights is helpful.
To put it more bluntly, a handful of us in the panhandle post a respectable number of really interesting moths that noone else ever looks at, and we're left to ID them on our own. We do our best, but because iNat users tend to follow precedent there is the distinct hazard of the development of folklore.
Quite bluntly, moths are just super hard in general! 11,000 species in the US, and very very few folks tackle them. Keep those chins up! :)
In the meantime, just keep checking on MPG, Bugguide, double check with the records there (even submit a few to bugguide), and then ID what you can! :)
No one ever said that mothin’ was easy!!! ;)
Thanks for your encouragement.
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