A Prairie Haven

It was 65 degrees today - a good day to bring out those early 'leps'.  ('Leps' is short for Lepidoptera - moths and butterflies.)

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A few weeks ago I saw an interesting moth in our neighborhood in Saint Paul. It was fluttering around during the day - at about 10 a.m. - and came to rest on the brick wall of a local coffee house.

It stayed there for several hours - plenty of time for me to go home and get my camera. (more...)

I’ve been raising Cecropia and Polyphemus moths for a few years but I’m still learning about the best ways to do it. Here are instructions based on my experience so far. (more...)

My caterpillars all died - they started eating the Box Elder, but I kept finding dead ones at the bottom of the cage. I put in some Norway Maple to see if that would help - they ate that too, but they kept dying. (more...)

These are tiny moths - less than half an inch long - that I found on the driveway. They were with large fluttering groups of butterflies, all sucking up the salt and minerals left from evaporating rainwater, dead animals and animal scat. Usually the moths or butterflies doing this are males, and the salts are used in mating. (more...)

I’m feeling completely steeped in Cecropias – I had 17 cocoons and almost all of them have hatched this week – two or three a day. (more...)

Yesterday Mike and I had one of the Cecropia cages open, taking pictures of one of the moths, when another moth started emerging! I'd never seen one emerge before - they do it very quickly - it took less than a minute. I took pictures of it, and thought I would post the whole sequence. (more...)

The Polyphemus caterpillars have hatched - 10 days after they were laid. (more...)