Field Report - Outer Banks, NC

[Alex]

Mike;
Longtailed Skipper is Urbana proteus. And unfortunately I am the one who
started this thread. I was in Environmental Education for many years
teaching grade schoolers and Elderhostel. The very young and the very old
can get cranky when you use Latin names on them, so I learned a lot of Leps
by their "nicknames".
Alex Netherton
Asheville NC
danetherton at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~danetherton
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Soukup <mikayak at ix.netcom.com>
To: Leps-L <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Date: Monday, October 05, 1998 1:04 PM
Subject: Field Report - Outer Banks, NC


>I was on vacation to the Outer Banks of NC last week.  Weather was
>mostly 80-90's during the day.  Butterfly-wise, I saw MANY(thousands) P.
>sennae (Cloudless Sulphers).  I also caught several Long-Tail Skippers
>(no latin name...I'm a moth guy!), 1 P. palamedes and 2 P. cresphontes
>(Giant's).  I THINK I saw a few Eurema niceppe(Sleepy orange?)....but I
>did not catch any so I can't verify it.
>
>The intersting thing was the Pink-Spotted Hawkmoths (Agrius
>Cingulatus).  There were literally huyndreds of them.  The house was on
>the beach, so I set up one MV light oceanside and one MV light on the
>bayside.  On the bayside (which WAS windward), I caught NOTHING.  I mean
>absolutelty nothing.  Not even one insect at the light.  On the
>Oceanside, I had hundreds of small Noctuids (no ID on many yet....except
>there were MANY flower moths (Genus Schinnia)).  But, for me, the
>excitement was the Agrius.  Several dozen were at my light every night
>(when the wind wasn't blowing 100MPH! (well, maybe not THAT hard....but
>REALLY blowing))  All were in perfect condition and many appeared to
>have hatched that day from locations near the house as they still were
>squirting mecomium when disturbed.  As I had never seen one before, it
>was quite "cool".   Also, 1 Tersa sphinx (Xylophanes tersa) showed up.
>
>That's all
>--
>Mike Soukup
>mikayak at ix.netcom.com
>Web Page => http://pw1.netcom.com/~mikayak
>click here to send E-mail=> mailto:mikayak at ix.netcom.com
>
>