Bug of the Day

@rosespirit submitted: Hi there, love your blog! I was wondering if you could help me ID this friend in their fancy basket I found in Central New Jersey (though since I found them in a packaged food item, I suppose they could have traveled from just about anywhere...)!

The attached is one pic per day to show off their color changing, hopefully they're pupating as opposed to the alternative...?

Hi, thank you! This sweet child appears to be a diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella. They are also sometimes called cabbage moths and are found literally all over the world on every continent except Antarctica. Their host plants are those in the family Brassicaceae which includes things like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, etc. Your friend does indeed look like they are successfully pupating.

It has been the year of the Micro Moth for my yard in 2017.

Hybroma servulella / Yellow Wave Moth (0300)

I met this mothy (lady?) friend near Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. I’m not familiar with them and would love to know what species they are and also what they ordered off of the Chinese takeout menu they were perusing

Brookgreen Gardens (also in South Carolina) has a lot of empty animal exhibits still because of c*vid but one of the few they did still have open was a honeybee hive that was between plastic panes so you could watch the lil bbs work! They had fact sheets up on the wall so you could learn too. I love zooming in on the pictures above and seeing their lil butts sticking out of the honeycomb

They also had this wooden grasshopper instrument that you play by running a wooden stick down its back lol

I found a house centipede molt recently and if they’re the same friend I saw running into my laundry room they have become L A R G E

Something laid an egg sac on my door! The bebs hatched while I was away on vacation but there were lots of them and they were v smol because this entire sac was maybe the length of a dime

And finally this very diligent (and hoppy) lil bumblebee who I loved dearly

A very nice collection of pals! The moth...maybe a diamonback moth? That's the only thing that comes to mind. I think they were ordering shrimp with garlic sauce. Because I am hungry and I wish I were eating shrimp with garlic sauce.

Anyway that's a super cool bee exhibit! I think I could watch them for hours. If you see the centipede again, tell them I said hello and that I love their legs. Wonder what the eggs were...did you see any of the bebes? Possibly could be from a moth...they remind me of tortricid moth eggs, and those would be quite small.

@tomboyfromhell​ submitted: Any way you could ID this one? I’m in Southern California