Lesser Maple Spanworm

cfox@mit.edu's picture
August 13, 2014
Lesser Maple Spanworm; finger for scale

I am not out of moths, or even out of spanworms. Here's a lesser maple spanworm (Speranza pustularia), photographed 8/2/2014, Wentworth NH. It's fairly small - measuring my fingernail, I make it 25mm WS. I think I've seen really quite a lot of these, but I had dismissed all white moths as too hard to identify to bother with - turns out that this one at least was quite easy. (This more recent weekend seemed to hold something of a breakthrough for me when it came to remembering an identification from one occasion to the next, and seeing differences live rather than in photographs; I had instant "that's a pine looper" and "that's a hooktip" recognition.)

I have purchased a camera upgrade (Canon EOS Rebel T5) and am awaiting the arrival of the lens (60mm macro) to put it through its paces. The Olympus PEN E-P2 has served me well (and it does not lack for glass or pixels) but Monty has been commenting on how much time I spend waiting for the autofocus to lock on, and manually adjusting focus. In any case, the DSLR market has changed significantly since I last bought one.

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