Citheronia splendens...Splendid Royal Moth

If you think a name like Splendid Royal Moth is a little too over the top for a moth, I'm here to change your mind! They are a truly spectacular moth: large, mouse gray with red-orange stripes and pale cream splashes. Their caterpillars don't quite reach the 6 inches their eastern cousin, the Regal or Royal Walnut Moth Citheronia regalis, does (in fact, that larva is so eye-catching it has its own colloquial name: Hickory Horned Devil), but C. splendens larvae are beautiful in their own right, having many rich colors and patterns as they develop into 4-5 inch lavender beauties with black and orange spikes.

Citheronia (sith-er-oh-nee-ah) splendens primarily occurs in Mexico but enters the southern edge of Arizona and far SW corner of New Mexico. Larvae feed on wild cotton (Gossypium thurberi) and pointleaf manzanita (Arctostaphylos pungens) with some records on evergreen sumac (Rhus virens choriophylla) and skunkbush sumac (Rhus trilobata), both native to the area.

I reared two C. splendens in 2017 from eggs. It was an amazing experience and I took hundreds of photos but never finished editing and making a selection of them to share until now.

Because I didn't have access to any of their native host plants, I first tried tempting them with ornamental cherry/plum and black walnut, since C. splendens is reported to accept black walnut in captivity and their cousin C. regalis is known to frequently feed on black walnut and occasionally plum species in captivity, plus these were my only freely available options that were anything close to what they might eat. These are the leaves you'll see in the first few photos. The larvae nibbled on both a tiny bit but refused to accept either.

Larval instars are noted as L1 (first instar), L2, L3, L4 and L5.
Remember that you can click on a photo to view in full-screen, and use the arrow keys to flip through all the photos in this post that way.

Eggs at 10 days old, head (black spot) becoming visible, August 8, 2017

Eggs at 11 days old, most of larva is visible (lots of scales from the mother were stuck to the eggs), August 9

Newly-hatched L1 larvae, August 10

Newly-hatched L1 larva, they are about 1/4 inch long at this stage, August 10

Newly-hatched L1 larvae, August 10

Once it became apparent that they didn't like these host options (granted, the black walnut wasn't in the best shape but I couldn't reach any fresher leaves, and I had my doubts about the ornamental cherry anyway) I went to plan B and tracked down some staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) which is native to northeast US, to test if they'd eat it. Bingo! They hungrily chowed down immediately. So I bought one at a nursery, set it up on my apartment's porch and rigged a sleeve of sorts: one of my rearing cages has a hole with a sleeve on the side, which I slid over a branch of the bush, tied it off and then hung the cage from a plant stand to keep the weight from pulling down on the branch too much.

Late L1 in common resting position for this stage, August 14

L1 preparing to molt, August 15

New L2, August 16

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) with my rearing cage setup

The molt to third instar gives a hint of what's to come, with lavender-tinted dark gray and more extensive orange markings.

Mid-L3, about an inch long or slightly bigger, August 22

Mid-L3, August 22

Late L3, about 1.5 inches long, August 26

Around this time, I started noticing that one larva was growing faster than the other, so I started calling the bigger one 'Larva A' and the smaller one 'Larva B'. The following images will note which larva by the letter, as you'll start to see the difference in dates and which stage each is in at the time.
Also note that the longest spines are solid white immediately after the molt to fourth instar, but within a couple hours the tips turn black and the head and legs darken with more orange and black.

Larva 'A' a few hours after molting to L4, August 28

Larva 'B' immediately after molting to L4, also note the brown patch with cluster of eyes, August 30

Larva 'B', new L4 with molted skin, August 30

Larva 'A', mid-L4, August 30

Larva 'A', mid-L4, August 30

Larva 'A', mid-L4, August 30

By this stage, L4, the larvae are about 3 inches long and have started to reach out and pull each leaflet to themselves and munch down one side of the rib and then the other, often consuming much of the rib by the end of the process.

Larva 'B', mid-L4, September 4

'A', late L4, September 4

By late fourth instar, larva 'A' was a lighter gray-lavender color while larva 'B' was slightly darker with a rosy tint. This difference continued into the fifth (final) instar as you'll see later.

'B', late L4, September 7

Final instar! I have to admit that while the larvae were a hefty 3 inches at this stage, I was a bit disappointed that they weren't bigger as they entered the fifth and final instar, thinking that perhaps I had stunted them by not being able to feed them their native hosts. What I didn't know was that they would spend over two weeks in this stage and add over an inch to their length!

'B', newly molted into L5, September 9

'B', newly molted into L5, note the little cluster of eyes on the head, September 9

'A', early L5, September 5

'A', L5, September 6

'A', L5..."I'm not moving if I don't have to, just gotta stretch a little more to reach it!", September 7

'A', L5, September 7

'A', L5, September 7

'A', L5, September 10

They were so heavy at this point that it was difficult to get a photo of the dorsal (back), because if I rotated a stem around they would slide over to one side or the other or simply droop upside down. It was around this time that I started carting them around with me to various places to show people these incredible creatures. The reactions were fun to see! As one person put it when seeing 'A' stretching across my palm and slowly crawling up my arm, "that's not a caterpillar, that's a SNAKE!"

Around September 10, they had grown so big that I couldn't stuff enough branches into the small rearing cage to keep them fed for more than a couple days and I was concerned they might contract a bacterial or viral disease from the cramped conditions. Considering there were only two caterpillars and they were so big that I couldn't easily lose them, I decided to lay out a small tarp in my living room, put the sumac bush on it and simply let them have at it with no containment. I delighted in those final two weeks of "hanging out with my caterpillars in my living room", cherishing every moment since I knew I may never have an opportunity again to rear this species. It's one thing to have a bunch of caterpillars on cuttings in a large rearing cage in my living room (which happens often), but quite another to have two giants free on a large bush where I can watch them eat from across the room.

'A', mid-L5 at 4.5 inches, only about a quarter inch more to go before she pupated, September 14

'B', early/mid-L5 at 3.4 inches, September 16

You can really see the color difference between 'A' and 'B' now. Although they kept eating for another week, they only gained about a quarter inch after this point, mostly putting on weight in preparation for pupating.

'A', mid/late L5 at nearly 5 inches, September 16

'B', mid-L5, note the rosy hue, September 18

'A', late L5, note the pale brownish lavender compared to 'B' above, September 18

Larva 'A' stopped eating and started crawling around looking for a good place to pupate on September 21. Larva 'B' started this activity on September 27.

'A', prepupal "walkabout stage", September 21

'B', prepupal stage, September 27

C. splendens does not spin cocoons but instead the larvae burrow about six inches underground and pupate in a chamber they hollow out in the soil. In order that I could watch the process and maintain a clean environment for the pupae, I ripped up a bunch of paper towels and stuffed them into a half gallon glass canning jar and placed the larva inside. I learned from experience years ago that soil-pupating caterpillars will chew threw mesh cages even if you have it stuffed full of paper towels for them! It took about seven days for the caterpillar to find a spot to her liking, discharge excess fluid and shrink down before finally pupating. Because she settled next to the glass, I was able to watch the process, she even used the fluid to kind of mush the paper towels into a big cavern. However, the glass jar made it difficult to get any pictures so I just waiting until she was all done and then carefully pulled out the new pupa as you see below.

'A', newly-formed pupa, September 28

'A', newly-formed pupa, September 28

'B' newly-formed pupa and shed caterpillar skin, October 5

'A' (top) and 'B' (bottom), hardened pupae on October 27, ready for overwintering.

'A' emerged on July 15, 2018, a gorgeous female! When disturbed she would flash her wings up like this.

'A' on July 15, 2018, natural resting pose

'A' on July 15, 2018

'A' on July 15, 2018, closeup of her head and legs.

For comparison, here is a male Regal Moth, Citheronia regalis, which emerged in 2011 from a pupa I purchased.

Regal or Royal Walnut Moth Citheronia regalis for comparison.

In case you are wondering what happened to 'B', these moths can be difficult to properly trigger into emerging and she never did last year. However, the pupa is still flexible and has some weight, so appears to still be alive. I overwintered her again and will try to imitate natural cues again to see if I can get her to emerge. They need to be sprayed with water starting in June and exposed to very warm temperatures to imitate the monsoon rains and summer heat of southern Arizona. Many species of butterflies and moths are known to stay dormant as pupae for multiple years until the conditions are "just right".
Because these moths are not native to Washington, of course I can't release them but they will live on in my specimen collection and be used to teach people about these spectacular moths.

I hope you enjoyed this photographic journey!

Update: moth 'B' emerged on July 8, 2019, another gorgeous female. Very exciting to have complete success on a rearing project, even if I did have to wait two years!

Spring in the Columbia River Gorge

Yesterday I visited a few of my favorite spots in the Columbia Gorge to see what was flying and dust off my Nikon camera a bit. Images are from Klickitat Canyon (all the "browns") and Grassy Knoll trail head (greenies).

Propertius Duskywing male, Erynnis propertius

Pacuvius Duskywing male, Erynnis pacuvius

Pacuvius Duskywing male, Erynnis pacuvius, nectaring on chokecherry

Pacuvius Duskywing male, Erynnis pacuvius, nectaring on chokecherry

Brown Elfin, Callophrys augustinus, nectaring on chokecherry

Sheridan's Green Elfin/Hairstreak, Callophrys sheridanii, probable male

Sheridan's Green Elfin/Hairstreak, Callophrys sheridanii, probable male

Sheridan's Green Elfin/Hairstreak, Callophrys sheridanii, probable female

Sheridan's Green Elfin/Hairstreak, Callophrys sheridanii, probable female (same one as above)

Recording observations and reporting data

Waaay back in 2016, I wrote an article explaining a few methods for recording butterfly observations: Recording Geospatial Data
Reminder: you can use the search bar on the left of my blog to search for butterflies or questions you might have and it will bring up any of my posts matching that topic.

As the 2019 butterfly season is starting up, I wanted to revisit the ways you can record and submit your observations.

Reporting...what, when, why, where, how?
What: any butterflies you see! We might not care about every single day you see a Cabbage White (an introduced and ubiquitous species) in your backyard, but it can be helpful to know the overall distribution and flight period. Perhaps one year you mark every day you see a Cabbage White in your yard, then in subsequent years you only track the day you see the first Cabbage White of the year in your yard, and maybe a few days towards the end of the season.

When: please don't overwhelm a record-keeper with daily emails of your observations. We will gladly take all the data, but if you are a prolific observer, save up your data and send in batches, either a couple times over the summer or once at the end of the year. If you are an occasional observer and/or have questions about an identification, go ahead and send an email at the time. If I can answer a question around the time you saw a butterfly, it might help you make better observations at the time rather than waiting for the following season.

Why: the data is used for research. Information on seasonal flight patterns gives insight into how butterflies respond to seasonal weather patterns or habitat changes. Location data can reveal patterns of habitat use, helping us identify overall species ranges, subspecies ranges, or population segregates, adding to our knowledge of the species.

Where: everywhere! Your backyard garden, a green strip in the city, coastal forests to mountain tops. The vast majority of butterfly records are near roads, which is to be expected and is still important, but if you are an avid hiker, especially if you are a backpacker getting into remote parts of the state, any records you can provide are very important to filling in the gaps in our data.

How: photographs, specimens, written or digital notes, emailed or mailed to a record-keeper. Details below...

Snipped view of butterfly records mapped on a large-scale map.

Recording data
I still highly recommend using the Avenza app as a way to quickly record locations that can easily be exported and emailed to a record-keeper. You can review my description of the app and some of my suggestions about the maps to use in the 2016 article linked above. They continue to add new maps for purchase in the store and improve the app. You can still purchase Benchmark state atlas overview maps (the two-page spread of the whole state you would see in the front of a printed Benchmark Atlas), but they are now starting to make the entire atlases available, a seamless mosaic of all the pages in a state atlas! I've purchased the California Benchmark Atlas in this format for $25 as I will be visiting the state later this summer. It looks nice and should be useful for helping me follow mountain roads and knowing where I'm at. I also recently discovered that you can plot photos from your phone into an Avenza map; it will create a pin at the location the photo was taken, and if you open the pin attributes you will see the photo. These can then be exported and viewed in Google Earth or emailed to other people. For more details on how to use Avenza, see my 2016 article or email me to request a copy of a help document I wrote (only slightly more detailed than the article).

Smart phones (at least iPhones) come with a default app called Compass. Most people ignore this, but did you know that besides the compass it also gives you your latitude and longitude location? I didn't! This was recommended to me by a colleague. If you are more of a paper-and-pen records keeper, you might prefer to use this over Avenza, as you simply open the app and write down your lat/long location for any observations you are making. Another option is to simply take a screenshot of the app whenever you take some pictures of a butterfly, as a quick and easy way to track the location of your sightings (on an iPhone, press the power button and the round menu button at the same time to take a screenshot of your phone). Just make sure you remember if you took the screenshot before or after the photos it's supposed to go with!

Submitting records

A few northwest lepidopterists work on projects to compile butterfly and moth records across Washington and Oregon and adjacent areas (depending on the project).

If you are interested in moths and assisting with data collection, please visit the PNW Moths website. They have excellent photographic plates of macro moths (larger moths, excludes the tiny "micro moths") that can help you identify what you are seeing, in addition to other photos on the detailed species pages. There is a "contact us" link for emailing the web administrator.

If you are interested in Washington butterflies, please submit records to me! I am helping with a project to compile all records in the state. We are working on a database of the records that will be used for research. For example, it is known that the Coronis Fritillary migrates up and down in elevation over the summer, but all the data has never been mapped, so having a complete set of records over history will help answer questions and provide a visual look at what is happening. The database will not be distributed publicly and data for sensitive species will be treated carefully. If you have other concerns for privacy or how the data will be used, please ask. If you wish to contribute to our work, please send the following information to me (contact email on the left of my blog page)...

1. Your name (& any other observers you wish to give credit to for the record)
2. Location data (Lat/Long coordinates or a very detailed description, or both)
• Latitude and longitude coordinates are highly preferred, we can generate the elevation and a text description of the location ourselves as long as we have the lat/long coordinates.
• PLS (Township, Range, Section) is acceptable if a detailed description is included, such as "forest road 3800, just past sharp switchback in the south half of section 10, T10N R20E", this way we can generate Lat/Long coordinates based on your description.
• Other data may be included but is not required: elevation, weather conditions, etc.
3. Date (day, month, year)
4. Photograph(s) or detailed description
• A photograph may not be accepted if it is a difficult to identify species that cannot be confirmed without a collected specimen. In such a case, the record may be included in the database but will have a note that it is "questionable/not confirmed" or something similar.
• Think about the species or species-group you are photographing and try to capture important features. If it is a blue or a fritillary, most species will require a ventral (underside) shot for positive identification. If you can't get that angle, or only a little peek at it, go ahead and send the photos anyway, we may still be able to make a positive ID based on the clarity of the images and/or habitat, date (some species only fly early or late in the season), etc.
• Pictures of other species flying at the same location can tell us what an otherwise unidentifiable butterfly is in your photo. This is because the season can vary widely depending on your location and elevation. A species that might not be expected to fly in late May could be corroborated by other unexpectedly late or early-flying species seen in the same location at the same time.
• Even blurry photographs can sometimes be identifiable, so don't hesitate to send what you have!
• If you can't get a photograph, give a clear description of what you saw and the record might still be accepted. For example, a "brown butterfly flying in sagebrush-steppe habitat" wouldn't be accepted because it could be any of three species of wood nymphs, but "a small white butterfly with orange-tipped wings" could only be a Julia's Orangetip, nothing else looks like it! While female Great Spangled Fritillaries look nothing like Mourning Cloaks when viewed side by side, they can easily be mistaken for Mourning Cloaks when they're flying because of the general darkness of their wings with the light tan/yellow border. If you can describe that you are seeing a butterfly with solid black (or reddish tinted in the sun) wings, an obvious thin yellow border on the wing and a row of blue spots just inside the border, we would be able to accept it as a Mourning Cloak record.

For Idaho butterflies, I am unaware of any efforts to document records in the state. However, because of the lack of field guides covering the whole state, I am considering writing a simple guide to Idaho butterflies, so am interested in compiling information about the distribution of species across the state. If you live in Idaho or visit often and would like to submit records, please send me data as described above for Washington and I will keep this information in a similar database.

For Oregon butterflies, there are records-keepers for the state but I am not up to speed on who the primary contacts are for submitting records. If you are interested in submitting Oregon records, let me know and I will try to put you in contact with the correct people. A great Oregon-specific butterfly resource is the new website launched by Neil Björklund: Butterflies of Oregon

In addition to the individual records-keepers, some records websites include:

Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA)

eButterfly

iNaturalist

These websites are handy but they don't "talk" to each other and some of the users submit their records on more than one site, so it can be tricky for record-keepers to monitor all of them to glean information and to check for duplicate records between the sites. My recommendation is that if you wish to submit your records to these websites, you also send your data to a local records-keeper (myself or others).

Happy hunting!

Zerene Fritillaries at the Sinlahekin, July 2018

Reviewing the past while looking forward

Happy New Year!
I thought I'd kick off the new year by sharing a snippet of the books that fed my early interest in bugs. There were lots of books along the way, such as every insect-related book at the local library!
Possibly the first bug book I ever owned is one I had forgotten about until last week when it was uncovered while helping my mom clear out an old cupboard. It came with a little clear plastic case with a green lid for capturing and observing bugs. I was around 5-7 when I had this book, it and the "bug bottle" were well-used!

Next up, these were "family books", but as I was the one who used them all the time they came with me when I moved. They cover the entire US, so were too general to allow me to identify every single Pacific Northwest species in my backyard, but I was able to learn the groups and it whetted my appetite for more.

This was my first personally-owned "big-person bug book"... I still distinctly remember taking it off the shelf at Barnes & Noble in Bellevue and flipping through all the pictures, excited to see they were all color photographs! If I remember right, I was about 7-8 and it was the book I chose after either a dentist or doctor's appointment (Mom would reward my sister and I with a new book for good behavior after getting our shots or a trip to the dentist :) It still wasn't focused on the Northwest, but it helped encourage my interest even more.

I don't remember where or when exactly I acquired this book, but I was probably younger than ten and Mom wrote my name inside the cover in her pretty handwriting. It became my go-to butterfly book through my elementary and high school years, until I purchased Butterflies of Cascadia and other books I currently use. Somehow I never paid attention to who the author was until after I discovered the "butterfly people" (WBA and LepSoc) and learned about Bob Pyle, then realized I already had one of his books! He signed it while visiting me for the first time at my apartment in Vancouver, WA while I was finishing up grad school.

Another family book that wound up in my library :) I loved to just look through all the pictures in this book, so much inspiration! There is a lot of good information too, I used some of the ideas in my early attempts at rearing butterflies and moths.

Ahhh...Bug Wise! I loved this book! Much like the Amateur Naturalist but in a simple format that was more easily digestible in my younger years, I used it all the time.

This was similar to Bug Wise but included all wildlife and color illustrations. It was a fun little book but not as well-used as some of the others here.

Usborne Guides, like this and The Young Naturalist above, were staples for home schoolers. We loved to look at all the pictures and read the snippets. I would dream about all the habitats and wished I lived by a creek or pond so I could find all the critters these books talked about. My sister and I were thrilled when we discovered a bunch of tadpoles living in our "pond" (seasonal runoff from irrigating our cow pasture), we didn't think the water was nice enough that anything would live in it! We were so excited to get a closer look that we got permission from Dad to use his fish net to catch some...but we didn't pay attention to his directions and grabbed his long-handled smelt-dipping net hanging in the shed instead of the little hand net he had intended, haha...well as soon as he saw us trying to catch the tadpoles with that long net we were quickly corrected and had to thoroughly wash out that fancy net so the cow pond water wouldn't ruin it! Whoops! We eventually did catch some of the tadpoles and had fun studying their little suction mouth and developing legs. Fun times!

This was my first step into a more advanced level of entomology. I don't remember if I got this book before or after we moved to central Washington, but its instructions on how to collect insects and spread them are how I first learned and started my own collection at age 10 in central Washington. Those first few specimens were kept in plastic clamshell containers (like what donut holes and pastries come in) with some scraps of styrofoam blocks glued to the bottom. Unfortunately, I didn't know about dermestid beetles yet, and after a few years most of the specimens were eventually destroyed. I still have a Woodland Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanoides) pinned with a short sewing pin from that early collection, along with a couple other butterflies collected a year or two later and mounted a little more properly on insect pins (longer and thinner than sewing pins).

Another one of my favorite books, this one had lots of tips for what to look for during each season. I liked that it gave me ideas of things to do throughout the year, not just in different habitats like the other books. This was great for an active outdoors kid! It has a surprising amount of information packed into each segment.

To round off the collection, I didn't use this book as much but enjoyed reading through it occasionally and gleaning whatever tidbits I could.

I hope you've enjoyed this little walk through my history, I've enjoyed reminiscing! I hope the books I've authored will impact others in little ways like these and other books through my life have impacted me. I have several more projects in mind for the future, some I may never get around to, but half the fun is in the dreaming!
Happy 2019!