Now it's for real (moths)

Steve Walter swalter15 at verizon.net
Thu Mar 17 10:58:26 EDT 2011


That would be a real moth night. I baited and black lighted at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge last night. I get very few opportunities to sample JBWR in March, were sea breezes make warm nights rare in March. Not so last night, and it gave me a chance to get out there 11 days earlier than I have in the past. The results were interesting. 11 species were recorded, mostly Morrison's Sallow (Eupsilia morrisoni). The more interesting species were:

Violaceous Sallow (Metaxaglaea violacea) -- my only previous records were Dec. 24, 2006 and Jan. 6, 2007, a very small sample that suggests this is a winter species. This one certainly took me by surprise.

Ipsilon Dart (Agrotis ipsilon) -- This is now my earliest record for a species that I have only a couple of early spring records in different places. It is, however, a multi--brooded species that persists through the fall as long as mild weather is available, and in fact, was recorded on the same Jan. 6, 2007 noted above. 

Jamaica Bay has been historically bad for the classic cold season genus Lithophane (pinions). Subject to review, I believe I recorded first Jamaica Bay records of L. hemina (Hemina Pinion) and L. antennata (Ashen Pinion) (in addition to the somewhat regularly occurring L. unimoda (Dowdy Pinion)).


Steve Walter
Bayside, NY
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/private/ctleps-l/attachments/20110317/38c76159/attachment.html 


More information about the Ctleps-l mailing list