Grapeleaf Skeletonizer?
Grape leaf Skeletonizer on Lavendar
Daily Photo
This handsome fellow looks a lot like a quite nasty grape pest which is now spreading throughout Northern California.
Last year, Napa put the whole county on alert when inspectors found one adult male in a trap.
I’ve never seen them before in the area. I’m going to have an etymologist check it out.
UPDATE: Whew, we are saved. It is really a Ctenucha Multifaria and is not a pest.
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Yep, the old “Redwing Blackmoth”. (Just kidding”
Isn’t that what we call a Fourth of July Moth? Don’t remember for sure, they’re really colorful in person.
It takes an etymologist to come up with a name like “Ctenucha multifaria!
Great that you went to the trouble to identify it when you thought it might be a serious pest.
Looks rather like a pest, doesn’t it?
For the first time in a long time, I saw a butterfly in my backyard! It was flitting around on my geraniums.
Lovely pic! I always like fuzzy flowers.
I photographed one of these last week. It is a very cool moth! I had never knowingly seen one, so I sent it off to Ron LeValley, someone who knows a lot about such things. He wrote me back.
“This moth is Ctenucha multifaria, one of the moths in the Tiger Moth family. It has sometimes been called Ctenucha rubroscapus but I find it more under the former name. I somewhere got the name Red-shouldered Ctenucha for this one, but most books don’t list a common name other than that applied to the whole family. Day flyer and handsome. Sometimes found in clusters.”
Kim, Interesting that neither of us had knowingly seen one before. But my etymologist friend photographed one last year so I guess they aren’t new to the area.
I’ll admit it. The thought of a Star Trek uniform did cross my mind.
Elaine, your inner nerd is showing…YAY!
Yes, they are hardly new to the area as I have seen them here for the past 30 years, always the end of June or early July and had been calling them Fourth of July bugs since hearing it from my neighbor, Wallace. Glad to know their “real” name and that they aren’t a threat.
I like that name! Ctenucha Multifaria is a bit of a mouthful from now on I’ll be calling them Fourth of July Bugs.
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