The Delights of Dickey Lake...

A most welcome invite to a lakeside cottage this weekend saw us heading northeast for three hours into deepest Hastings County. Dickey Lake to be precise! A lovely spot to indulge in fine company, much beer, anything watery and, of course, some quality mothing! And, there is the added attraction of driving past "Thanet" Lake - ahh, memories of back home...

And the moths were indeed good. I caught a fine selection of August fare including a few noctuid year ticks and some cracking micros. The biggest surprise, in more ways than one, was the capture of two Great Ash Sphinx Moths (the fresher of the two featured above). These lads are HUGE - totally impressive in spite of their rather sombre attire. In fact they are so well camouflaged they were hard to find once placed on a tree trunk to recover from their ordeal...


This is a Purple Arches. In life this chunky noctuid exhibits a subtle purple sheen on the wings which is rather nice. The larvae feed on alders, blueberries, birches and others.


The Yellow Three-Spot. I'd only seen this once before so I was delighted to be able to take a nice series of photos. Sod Grasses are the prefered larval foodplants.


The electric Scarlet-winged Lichen Moth! A really lovely-looking moth. I catch this one all over the place but it seems never to be common - usually just one of two per session. The larva feed on tree lichens.


When James rushed into the cottage with the net saying he'd caught something nice for me I really didn't expect this! A brilliant Black-and-yellow Lichen Moth. I was so pleased. It was a bit flighty but, thankfully, it posed for a few photos. The larval foodplants are lichens and the adult can be seen during daylight hours feeding on autumn flowers like goldenrods. Later in the day James caught another creature which bore an amazing resemblance to this moth...but it turned out to be a Net-winged Beetle called Calopteron terminale. Sadly it flew off in a beetle-like way before I could get any pix.


Finally, for now, a colourful Parthenice Tiger Moth - just look at those hindwings!! Well, everyone likes a Tiger Moth don't they???

Thanks to our gracious hosts Cynthia and Alan for allowing us to indulge ourselves...well, me anyway!