Subject: Re: How do you pose an underwing moth?

From: kruse <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 09:30:03 CST

Terry Morse <[email-masked]> writes:

  Can anyone suggest non-injurious ways to get an underwing moth
resting during the daytime to spread its wings so I can photograph
the hindwing pattern?
------------------------
  Underwing moths, Family Noctuidae, genus Catocala are normally
quite skittish and challenging to photograph.  Usually about a half
hour in the refridgerator (simulates an unseasonable arctic blast,
quite harmless really) to slow them down, and some coaxing with a
camel hair brush to reveal the hindwings gets good results.
------------------------
  Terry Morse continues:
  I recently saw and photographed an attractive medium-pale green
moth, which I am pretty sure is an underwing.  Its body is
approximately 2cm long. With wings folded over the back, the pattern
on the forewings is predominately wavy thick black lines widely
spaced so that plenty of green shows through. There are thick white
lines immediately adjacent to some of the black lines, and
incidental additional black and white marks on the forewings.  As
strikingly patterned as the moth is, I expected it would be simple
to identify from the photographs in _The Moth Book_, by Holland, but
not so.  I am in Oregon, on the north Pacific coast of the USA.
-------------------------
  I doubt that the specimen you have is an underwing.  Underwings
are predominantly late-summer moths (most mid-July to mid-Sept in
the midwest, but some prairie species are out as early as May).
Also, underwings go to great effort both in morphology and behavior
to make themselves "invisible" during the day.  Most underwing's
forewings are dull grey, brown, or black in order to match the bark
of trees.  There are a couple of species world wide that go as gaudy
as white, and some others do have a little green amidst the browns
and greys, but a "striking" pattern of green, black and white on the
forewings is not condusive to good crypsis.  If it is an underwing,
a look at the hindwings should reveal the distinctive black-barred
"underwings", but I bet they will be plain, or similar to the
forewings in this case.
     I am not familiar with western moths, so someone else could
probably be more help with actually identifying your moth, but I
know underwings (the genus is usually distinctive worldwide), and I
don't think yours is one.

Cheers!
Jim Kruse

Dept Entomology
Univ Wisonsin
Madison, WI 53706
608-262-4755