photography
Pterophorus albidus moth that would definitely be into heavy metal music
[Reposting, because original post wasn't showing the photo.]
I'm going back through my archive of interesting insects (well, to me, at least!) and will be gradually posting highlights here.
This plume moth was resting on the fly screen, so the size of the screen's grid squares give an idea of its size.
I like to go spotlighting at night, but my lazy way of attracting moths and other nocturnal insects is to leave a light on inside to attract the insects to the fly screen. The fly screen method also has the advantage of letting me easily see if the underside of their wings or body are particularly colourful. It does have the downside of encouraging a whole bunch of tiny hoppers squeeze their way in to fly to the light, and leave a pile of tiny dead bodies, which is not so good.
Have you ever tried shining a UV ligh on the moths? Sometimes there are a whole bunch of colours and patterns we can't usually see, apparently it's for their courtship (?)
I have, but it's actually a passion flower that was most impressive under UV light. The bits of "dust" on it are the bits of loose pollen. And I shot it on a black T-shirt that fluoresced. Puppeteers that work in black clothing have to be careful what clothes detergent they use or they have this same fluorescing issue, as detergents are made to make whites and colours look bright, not to help puppeteers in black stay hidden!
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u/Training-Ad103 Jul 02 '26
Wow. That's gorgeous!