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Project Noah Nature School
Elhamma australasiae
20mm long; furry moth; mostly dark shades of brown, grey, black; very stout body; two pairs of robust looking furry legs forwards and one pair feeble legs? kept tucked underneath; a pale white wavy flash below head to half way along body; wings held tent-like; tail just clear of folded wings; long, pale yellow, feathery antennae (held backwards); quite large dark shiny eyes
Suburban fringe garden but on local casuarina (sp?); natural position was hanging vertically under this stem.
suspected snub-nose moth; mouth seems to be locked onto the stem; Changed to ElHamma - which feed on poaceae !!
Spotted on Feb 8, 2012
Submitted on Feb 9, 2012
12 Comments
Belated thanks martinl. 8-( Thanks Stephen.
nice shot in it's natural habitat
Nicely spotted and identified. The wave pattern on the wing shows it to be a male swiftmoth like your other ones. I'm trying to offer some new data but you know it all. This family HEPIALIDAE also includes ghostmoths like this one http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/854... http://lepidoptera.butterflyhouse.com.au...
this might actually be elhamma...
Yes Emma - we have got some very weird and wonderful stuff here and so much is still unknown. It's a bit overwhelming for a total beginner like me.... still, got to start somewhere.
interesting for sure for us non Aussies!
I just found a CSIRO version of martinl's linked species and the tail and orange flecks look better - might go with this id and reference for a while....http://www1.ala.org.au/gallery2/v/Lasiocampidae/Porelavetusta/porela_vetusta_01.jpg.html
Thanks martin - Leuba just gave me a lecture about it too... :) :)
Argybee, pinned specimens are designed to display maximum visual information including hind-wings and body that are hidden in photographs. Natural posture, behaviors, foodplants, habitats, dissections and larval stages are also important but need other input, like field observations and photos. For example, if this guy is feeding off the stem, as it seems to be doing, that would be fascinating.
Seems to be sucking on this stem - didn't want to let go even though I handled it fairly roughly to gets angles for shots.
Thanks for that link martin. You're right about there being so many - it's quite overwhelming. Your link looks closer than most I've found so far. It's funny that I found a candidate but soon realised it was better for my previous 'window' spotting. Sometimes I think it's a pity that they 'spread' and pin the specimens making it hard to work out how they would look naturally. The tail is obviously very different. I'll keep that link tagged.
Nice pics argybee I don't know this...there are too many, does this help?
http://lepidoptera.butterflyhouse.com.au...