visitor

This beautiful creature was at my door yesterday morning.

Actually, it was *on* my door, under the portico, but later flew onto a sapling where there was just enough light to take these snaps.

I know almost nothing about moths, but it was easy to identify this one in seconds by searching for "MA moth huge brown." It's Antheraea polyphemus; a native silkmoth. And the pheromone-detecting antennae indicate that this one is a male.

In late afternoon, when thunderstorms were predicted, I clipped the branch the moth was resting on and gently carried branch and moth back under the shelter of the portico. The moth was having none of it. It flew high up into the branches of tall trees by the barn. I was able to track it's path much more easily than that of a bird, in part because of it's size but also because of it's swoopy, up-and-down fluttery flight.

In case you might be interested, this link contains lots of information and many pictures of the lifecycle of Antheraea polyphemus, on a blog written by a huge fan of silkmoths. I visited just to see a few snaps, but ended up reading every word. And this link on the same blog documents the process of collecting and spinning silk from hatched-out silkmoth cocoons. Fascinating.

Have you ever spun silk from cocoons? I saw silkmoth cocoons for sale at a fiber fair years ago - again, these were cocoons from which the moth had already hatched and departed - but had no idea of how to harvest and process silk. It seemed likely to be overwhelmingly finicky and labor-intensive considering the tiny volume of fiber produced.

In the "Life is Funny, Retrospective Department," this was the very fiber fair at which I met cashmere goats for the first time.

Mallow says, " Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha."

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