Friday, November 12, 2010

End of the road

These little brown moths are coming in my windows almost every day, now that it's cold outside.



LBM, unidentified. As difficult as LBBs.

They are probably seeking warmth, but it's too late for them; they all die in a few hours. I think I'm running a hospice. At least it's comfortable.

I haven't ID'd them yet; I'll send them to BugGuide ASAP, but first, I want to search through their thousands of moths to at least get an idea of where it fits.

6 comments:

  1. We have these small moths as well, Susannah, but they've died from the cold and frost. Yesterday I found one in the house, but it was halfway dead.

    The moths we have come from the Interior Fir tree that is next to our deck. You can see them as catapillars, which do quite a bit of damage to the tree before there are enough birds around, flying from the south, to eat them. And enough catapillars survive to swarm the house in the fall.

    Someone told me what they were awhile ago, but I've forgotten just now. They can kill trees, if there are enough of them. Spruce budworm comes to mind...

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  2. We have little brown moths in the house all Autumn long. I think they are starting to die back as well.

    How cool that your little brown month is shaped like a heart!

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  3. Looks like some sort of Geometrid mot.

    My new house a garden with many mature trees and I can't wait to run the moth trap in spring

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  4. Looks like Bruce Spanworm, Susannah. BugGuide: http://bugguide.net/node/view/9745

    They fly the latest of virtually any of the moths around here (and presumably also out in BC) - the last to show up at lights, in mid-October, and sometimes hanging around through November while the weather is warm.

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  5. Nice heart-shaped wings.

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  6. Thanks, Seabrooke. That matches, and yes, it is found coast to coast.

    Marion, I wonder if yours are the same ones or similar moths, like the Autumnal; these spanworm caterpillars (bright green) eat deciduous leaves, and pupate at the end of June. But then the female, which doesn't fly, crawls around on the trees in the fall. Only the males fly.

    Mark; yes, it's a Geometrid.

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