07 May 2024: back at it, albeit in KY. More than a dozen Tigers spotted, couldn't net a single one- all flying somewhere fast and erratic. I couldn't get to a couple of my favored sites because of flooding.

I saw Papilio troilus, and undetermined thing like P tharos, and blues puddling, but in KY last week no marcellus puddling. In fact, I've never seen marcellus puddle. Interesting. I only brought two specimens back, I believe a pair, and the difference is interesting, one that is definitely female is...

Always cool to see a low-catch specimen. And yes, Coleoptera as well.

I just returned from northern KY. There are many beat V atlanta there, but perhaps 20% of what I'm seeing in Upstate NY.

I have a bin of various dried US leps you can have. They are of course papered and dried, so would require softening in order to be spread. I'm amazed I even have any. I always kept many extras around for projects such as this, but it's been a long time since anyone had asked me so I unloaded thousa...

I just returned from northern KY (Bullitt County) and E. marcellus is everywhere. They were common along an overgrown dirt road under power lines, some resting in the grass. Most though were nectaring (exclusively) on white blackberry flowers. Some were quite fresh, indicating recent eclosion. In th...

You guys are just brutal. The pictures were taking when they were biting us as you can see they are sitting on our skin and you can actually see their legs are going inside our skin. Take a close look before you judge people. If you don't know that's ok we haven't had anyone able to identify them b...

Paul K wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2024 3:02 pm
We have here on the north side of the Lake Ontario also unusual numbers of V.atalanta.

I am not surprised. Clearly they are coming from "south." The question is: why in such numbers?

Here in North TX, for weeks now, I've been seeing more V. atalanta than ever before - absolute swarms of them. Of course, TX has always been a great place to see swarms of things, but the butterfly numbers here this spring are really outstanding. Not just atalanta, but also cardui and virginiensis ...

Last week, before it snowed, there was an unusual number of V. atlanta around. It warmed up a bit three days ago, albeit with rain. Today it's 64F and sunny. There are hundreds of atlanta, everywhere. Most are flying fast, I've only observed one alight. They are absolutely beat. So either there was ...

I'm unclear why IN has both Classifieds and Marketplace. What's the difference?

Which would be the best to sell some antique and classic entomology books?

Just for reference, it did it again at 1:30pm Eastern.

That luna is spectacular. I have a specimen from KY that has purple edging, but no vertical stripes. AFAIK nobody has done genetic analysis to see what the relationship tree is for luna. Who knows what is variation, and what is something taxonomically significant. Vernon's series of Hyphantria is im...

If they just used common sense, There's your problem. Look, it is universal country-wide that one cannot catch and kill song birds, despite many having very healthy populations. Meanwhile, house cats are allowed to roam freely and have been documented to have a significant negative impact on song b...

Excellent. Of course, field guides have limited space. Species descriptions though often show only one/ one pair, and I have this feeling that the type specimens depicted are sometimes cherry-picked to match the morphological description/ differentiators.

Wisconsin is more like Canada than Upstate NY, so it's quite likely that many or most species can't overwinter. In Upstate NY we have several Nymphalid species that overwinter. The appearance of various Nymphalid species may be migration (e.g., Vanessa) or it may be just massive population explosion...

This type of message is usually used when the host servers are swamped. It's to avoid further usage of the servers, which may serve one website or twenty. Typical causes of high traffic swamping are (1) content that is getting a lot of views [not likely on insectnet, but they might also host a porn ...

OK, so how does one say "they don't have this blue on the FW" without acknowledging this one friggin' specimen? "rarely" seems to be imply perhaps it's more common.

Bunch of tree huggers with big hearts and few brains. "we are shifting the paradigm from collectors with nets, capturing and killing butterflies, to enthusiasts with cameras and binoculars, capturing beautiful images of live butterflies in nature." That's nice. We need more photos of misid...

What I typically do from time to time, is rearrange things, and put them in "better" places. I broke down and spent a weekend doing that last year. What a nightmare. I'd been sticking specimens wherever they fit physically, and I had taxa spread all over in the wrong places. If you want t...