"What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked." -Aldo Leopold
Last month the WGNSS Nature Photography Group took a side trip back to one of our favorite places – the Roston Native Butterfly House in Springfield, MO. Among other fantastic native leps on display were adult and larval forms of Hyalophora cecropia, or the Cecropia Moth. Named after the legendary King Cecrops of Athens, H. cecropia is the largest moth native to North America. Thanks again to the Roston Butterfly House and to the great volunteers who staff the facility and put up with a bunch of old dudes with cameras.
I’ve tried hunting for caterpillars among my native plants in the yard over the past several years, hoping to find some interesting caterpillars with very little success. This past weekend I was looking around my little prairie patch in the backyard with my UV flashlight and found something exciting. Two large caterpillars feasting on partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata). It took me quite a bit of research to finally identify them as one of the Zale moths (Zale sp.) in the Family Erebidae. I am fairly certain this must be Zale lunata (lunate zale), but according to Wagner in “Caterpillars of North America” and “Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America,” Z. lunata and Z. minerea are nearly indistinguishable as larvae. However, because there are no records I could find of Z. minerea feeding on herbaceous plants and Z. lunata is known to feed occasionally on herbaceous plants, particularly those in the pea family, I think it is a safe bet to call these Z. lunata. To test this for certain, I hope to be able to find them again and try rearing one to an adult, which are easy to distinguish between these two species.
15-August update:
A couple of nights after taking these photos, I visited the prairie patch and found four of these zale caterpillars. I collected one and put it into a flight cage along with some freshly cut partridge pea.
After not being able to find the caterpillar for the past two days, I finally discovered that it had pupated and has used some of the vegetation to cover its cocoon. There’s a chance it might eclose this year. If not, I’ll have to wait until the spring, assuming it survives that long. Here’s a photo of its pupation site.
Zale sp. cocoon
28-August update:
Upon returning from work today, I found that my Zale had eclosed! I took a few photos and I think we can now definitely say this is Zale lunata.
On the 24th of July, during the new moon and National Moth Week, the WGNSS Entomology Group set up several blacklighting stations at Tyson Research Center as a start of an entomological survey. Between WGNSS members, TRC staff and students from Washington University, I estimate there were 25-30 people in attendance until around midnight. Overall, I think the evening was a success and the numbers and diversity of insects was good. We had a few nice highlight species, but because of the number of people, I did not spend time trying to remove moths from the sheet and onto a natural background. I still have a few to process, but this post covers the moths I cared to photograph.
Many thanks to Katie Westby and Rich Thoma for organizing this event. I’d also like to thank jwileyrains at butterfliesandmoths.org for confirming and helping me with some identifications.
It’s funny when I think of some of the interactions I’ve had with friends who are specialists. I remember multiple times when bringing up insects in the field with birders, that I would hear some form of the reply “they’re just food for the birds.” Alternatively, when on an insect outing, you’re lucky to have an entomologist lift their head from the ground to see or listen to an interesting or rare bird. And the botanists? Well, let’s just say they typically have a very specialized set of interests.
One of the things I love about spending lots of time watching and photographing bird’s nests is that, at least with good enough optics, you can often be fortunate to identify the food that the parents bring to feed their young. This sure beats killing a bird or causing them to regurgitate in order to identify their prey.
Being a tyrant flycatcher after all, these kingbirds do not typically bring in the caterpillars that are so often the main prey that passerines feed upon. Instead, the kingbirds prefer taking their prey on the wing, which means any arthropods that can fly. Here are a few images where I can get a good idea of the identification on the insect prey.
I’m no expert in identifying the Odonata, but dragonflies seemed to be a staple food source brought back to the nest. If you have a good idea on the identification of this one, please let me know.
A large dark bee. Potentially a Bombus?
A widow skimmer (Libellula luctuosa) goes down the hatch.
One of these lucky nestlings will soon be ingesting a very pretty snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis).
While dragonflies seem to make up the bulk of the prey brought to the nest during the heat of the day, early morning and later evening prey seem to mostly consist of beetles. Here a parent holds a cerambycid beetle (Typocerus sp. prob. velutinus).
Here a parent brings in a rose chafer beetle (Macrodactylus sp., either M. subspinosus or M. angustatus).
I hope you enjoy seeing some of these nest photos. In the next couple of posts I will share more of these showcasing other behaviors.
I posted about the Orgyia leucostigma (white-marked tussock moths) that I reared last year to adulthood and documented their breeding and oviposting on my back porch. In mid-April, the young had emerged from their egg case after overwintering on the porch. Here are some photos of these extremely tiny little ones. It was a pretty difficult task as these guys were not much larger than an average grain of sand. Additionally, shortly after emerging they just wanted to spin a thread and balloon away on the wind, which is their primary method of dispersing. I used a small paintbrush to try and gently move them to some leaves, but their threads would quickly get wrapped around their long setae. After getting some photos, I left most of them to disperse in the backyard.
While hunting caterpillars in mid-September. I found this sawfly larvae in the middle of the Kaintuck Hollow Fen in Phelps County. This might be in the Nematus genus as this group feeds a lot on willows. It wasn’t until I looked closely at the photo much later that I noticed it was being parasitized by a small wasp. I would have loved to have gotten a closer photo of the wasp.
I believe this is the last I have to share from this year’s caterpillar season. Overall, I think this was a successful season and I had a lot of fun finding some cool species. I still have tons to learn and species to find. I’m hoping to continue this next year and hopefully get going on early season hunting. This is quite difficult because the spring and early summer are great for things like birds and plants as well. I need more Saturdays!
I’ll finish up with this fantastic late season walnut sphinx caterpillar (Amorpha juglandis) that I found at Onondaga Cave State Park in late September. I finally noticed that this genus name, Amorpha, is shared with one of my favorite groups of plants, the false indigos, like Amorpha fruticosa. I looked this up and Amorpha comes from Greek for “shapeless” or “deformed.” This genus of plants received this name due to their having only one petal on their flowers, unlike the rest of the Fabaceae.
Amorpha juglandis has been in a few other genera and now is placed in it’s own monotypic genus. I have not been able to find out which particular characteristic provides the “deformed” nature for the Amorpha epithet. If you know this, I’d be grateful to learn this.
Red-crossed Button Slug Tortricidia pallida fam. Limacodidae Host plant: red oak member (Quercus sp.) Dates found: 14, Sep, 2024 Locations Found: Kaintuck Hollow, Phelps County, MO Notes: Although we supposedly have two other button slug species in Missouri, this is the only one I’ve been able to identify. Very common.
Silvery Checkerspot Chlosyne nycteis fam. Nymphalidae Host plant: yellow wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) Dates found: 30, Jun, 2024 Locations Found: Young Conservation Area, Franklin County, MO Notes: This species overwinters as third instar caterpillars.
With books, apps and internet sources, I think I did a fair job of identifying most of the caterpillars that came my way this year. There are still a few that I have not been able to identify, however. I placed the following on iNaturalist and Bugguide months ago, but so far no experts have given their opinions. If you have any ideas that could help, I’d appreciate to hear them.
This first cute little one I found at Englemann Woods N.A. in Franklin County, MO in late June. I wish I had taken more photos. I think this could be one of the punkies (fam. Nolidae), but it might also belong to one of the other spiney families.
This next one is part of a group I really loath to try to identify – nondescript green cats. I’ve gone through the guides numerous times but simply couldn’t find a perfect match. It most likely belongs to the Noctuidae family, but that doesn’t narrow it down very far. This was also found at Englemann Woods N.A. in late June and found on white oak (Quercus alba).
Next up is also a group that I haven’t gotten the hang of yet. This is likely a tiger moth (subfam. Arctiinae), but I’m not sure where to begin there. Found at Prairie Garden Trust on July 6th. Host plant not recorded.
Finally, a cat that I found in a leaf shelter of Vitis aestivalis at Kaintuck Hollow in Phelps County on July 13th. I believe this might be Herpetogramma aeglealis (fam. Carambidae) but it’s not close enough for me to be certain.
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 