3/5 A Rude Awakening

I did my daily peek at the front porch light on the way out the door, and saw a moth tangled up in a web. I blew some air past it and got no response. A sad way to get a moth, but it was pretty well intact, so I went inside, got a utensil and a plate to scoop it down and brought it inside.

As I was getting ready to draw it. . . the moth, which had previously allowed itself to be nudged around and moved, suddenly started twitching, flicking its wings, and then walking! I got the little thing back outside, undrawn, but apparently woken up from some kind of hibernation.

An interesting round of searches

I tried "do moths hibernate in winter", and came across "Winter Moth". The pictures looked a lot like the moth I had just set free. Yay!

I read up on Ortheroptera Brumata, a.k.a. Winter Moth, and found out it was an invasive pest in the Pacific Northwest. Boo!

(image from bugguide.net - Molly Jacobson)

And then I continued on with the search, trying to figure out what family this moth was in, and learned that Ortheroptera Bruceata, Bruce Spanworm Moth looks very similar. Hm.

(image from TheDistractedNaturalist)

Compare both to the picture I shot of (undoubtedly) the same moth a few nights ago: 

Ortheroptera sp?

So I don't know exactly what to think, but I was happy to get the moth down to two species!  These two are similar not only in appearance but in habits. They are active in winter months, and have females that are flightless. They are in the family Geometridae, which oddly enough is not on the Pacific Northwest Moth site. The name of the family comes from the larvae - inchworms!

(Istocphoto - Eric Shaw)

So that was the excitement for the morning, and I will be able to count it as "a thing" for now. Other moths, as long as I know they're not one of those two species, can count on their own. Maybe I'll be able to find one of these moths again and identify it, but we'll see.

Close to 100 things so far!