Moth sleeping in my yard

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Hi!
About one month ago, I had the surprise to see a magnificient moth taking its day nap in my backyard, behind the white spruce. It's an Antheraea polyphemus (in common french: "Polyphème", the name of the cyclops blinded by Ulysses), a rather common species of lepidoptera found here in East Canada. I couldn't help it, I had to photograph it. And here it is, in all its beauty.

In french language, a moth is called "phalène" and a butterfly is called "papillon". However, the word "phalène" is most of the time used by enthomologists, zoologists and other animal specialists. The public most often refer to moths by naming them "papillons de nuit"; in English: "night butterflies". And this "butterfly of the night" once chose the safety of my white spruse to take its day sleep.

Interesting

Isn't it beautiful? When I see this, I think to myself that when it comes to beauty, moths don't have much to envy butterflies with.

Yes, Valérie! That's a beautiful animal and it is good that people like you can appreciate what Nature give to us. These Giant silk moths are beautiful animals. You turned almost in a lepidopterist thes days. Fabulous the contribution you're giving to Blaine butterfly identifications.
Do you know, how much food crosses the mouth of a moth in a month?

What an amazing creature ! And it must be very large ?
It looks so soft. Almost as if it was covered in fur

Beautyful colours, - and those "eyes"

Thankyou for sharing ! You gave me a smile on a cold, grey morning

Roger wrote:

Yes, Valérie! That's a beautiful animal and it is good that people like you can appreciate what Nature give to us. These Giant silk moths are beautiful animals.  You turned almost in a lepidopterist thes days. Fabulous the contribution you're giving to Blaine butterfly identifications.
Do you know, how much food crosses the mouth of a moth in a month?

It dépends on the species of the moth. It also dépends on if it's a larva or an imago. Caterpillars of all kinds are indeed gluttonous eaters. A Caterpillar, from its birth to right before it turns into a nymph, grows to reach at least thirty times its birth size. As for imagos, well, that's a different story: many moth imagos don't feed at all. It's the case of the Luna Moth. Yet a few species do feed on nectar and come to sugar "traps". It's the Case of the Yellow Underwing.

By the way, my interest for insects is older than you think. At home, I am working on a research about insects since 2005, now. For this, I recycled an old high school satchel where my pages are made of construction paper, one color per insect order (black for coleopteras, green for lepidopteras, orange for odonatas, etc). All my insects included (one per page, with description and photos) are actually already dead spécimens found everywhere (that I put in between transparents scotchtapes and acétates to protect them after drying and desinfecting them with Lysol). This is why many of the insects in my research are incomplete. In a few cases, it's only a wing (like the Cecropia Moth and the Luna Moth). In my introduction, I talk about what is an insect (with dead spécimens) and what arthropods are not insects (on this page, I put a millipede, a centipede, a cloport and a pseudoscorpion).

Four other school satchels are also used, the very same way, for a research about trees (where my dried spécimens are leaves), flowers (dried flowers; two satchels were necessary for the high number of flowers species available) and primitive plants (graminids, prails, moss and even lichens---even if those are not exactly plants).

All of this to tell you that even though I'm not exactly a Professional botanist ot enthomologist, I'm not either exactly a beginner in the given subjects.

SUSANNE wrote:

What an amazing creature ! And it must be very large ?
It looks so soft. Almost as if it was covered in fur

Beautyful colours, -  and those "eyes"

Thankyou for sharing ! You gave me a smile on a cold, grey morning

Many moths look indeed like plush toys we find in stores! This is how they survive at the lower températures on night times, when they are active. But unfortunately, we cannot touch them without damaging them, they are so fragile...

Old post I know, but looks like a Polyphemus moth.

QuollMate wrote:

Old post I know, but looks like a Polyphemus moth.

Read the first post

She is so lovely, it seems like she has adapted to her surroundings.

merci pour le partage! :)

Such a beauty!