Yes they will come to her assuming she calls and assuming there are males flying. Exactly what the pheromone is chemically is probably unknown and the exact flight time of the males might vary though. I've found that the males of the western Smerinthus fly really late, like 1-3 AM. Good luck. I woul...

Keep in mind that they see in a different wavelength, so just because it looks like it would be a good mimic to our eyes, it isn't necessarily good to them. It would be interesting to know what the world looks like through their eyes. Based on some of my field work/experiences, I suspect that some o...

It's widespread but kind of rare in Arizona. I've gotten them up by Flagstaff, over in the White Mountains near Springerville, in the Chiricahua Mountains, and in the Santa Catalinas by Tucson, but I've never encountered them very commonly. They are much more common in the high country of Colorado, ...

Most of what holds the wings in place is the dried muscles at the joint between the wings and the thorax. So by relaxing the thorax, you relax those and the wings will instantly droop. In my opinion, with how fragile/brittle dried specimens are, you should just relax the whole thing and repin it. Yo...

Not to be negative, but it’s been pretty bad for several years. I’d say that 2019 was the last average year of monsoon collecting. I doubt 2024 will be great because we are experiencing El Nino conditions, which means wet winters and dry summers. So I bet it will be kind of dry and crappy. La Nina i...

Yeah there are lots of places to collect besides Pena Blanca and Madera Canyons. In recent years collecting in Madera has been kind of problematic because some USFS rangers have been kicking people out around 10 PM. I honestly haven’t even tried those 2 spots in at least 10 years because I prefer to...

What are you looking to collect? Arizona is a big place with a lot of different species of insects.

The electra clio from 1st instar larvae. Older larvae can be found, but in my experience the parasitism rate is 70-80% by the third or fourth instar, so it is almost a futile effort at that point. Although I’ve found egg rings of electra, like most species of Hemileucas, the egg rings are very hard ...

Here’s one drawer of mine. Hemileuca grotei diana, H. stonei, H. juno, H. electra clio, H. electra mojavensis, H. electra electra. I reared or collected all of them.

My mixed drawers are either full of stuff that I just collected this year and haven’t had time to integrate into the rest of my collection, or it’s extra stuff that I’ve collected and pinned that I’m looking to trade or give away.

Not to get too far off topic, but here are the 4 Sphinx side-by-side for comparison:
Top - S. vashti
2nd - S. chersis
3rd - S. perelegans
4th - S. drupiferarum

If you want to tell S. chersis from vashti from perelegans you don’t even need to look at the wings. You can just look at the markings on the thorax. You might also get S. drupiferarum in Oregon which looks a bit like perelegans. S. sequoiae is also present, but it is tiny compared to the others.

The benchmark for a “good” night is 10/20. This means 10 species of Saturniids and 20 species of Sphingids. I haven’t had a night like that in 7-8 years. Overall moth numbers tend to be dwindling. With that said, I’ve collected or reared all the SE AZ Saturniids and most of the Sphingids. Nice larva...

I’ve collected and reared H. euryalus. In the spring in S. CA it flies pretty early. Here’s my modest collection of them (gloveri left, euryalus right).

They generally don’t fly in straight lines. They zig-zag everywhere constantly. Some species like hera bob along the Z axis too, going up and down 25-30 feet in the air in their normal flight. You need a shotgun, not a net for them. The strange-looking, variable individuals of eglanterina, nuttalli,...

Nice. I’m not sure what qualifies as an aberrant H. eglanterina. Everything that you have pictured except for the male H. chinatiensis is eglanterina. There are collectors with not only entire drawers of eglanterina, but entire cabinets, and they still don’t have every color variant. Generally speak...

Nice, I’ve actually gotten all but P. astylus in one night before. There’s a spot in AZ where you can get S. jamaicensis, saliceti, and ceryisi as well as P. excaecata and P. myops sympatrically, although P. excaecata is rare there. The closely related Pachysphinx occidentalis is also present there....

They are a pain in the neck to collect, quite literally. They sit at the very top of 25’ tall oak trees and fight with each other. When looking up at them from underneath, they aren’t purple, but instead look like a blue in the genus Celestrina flying around. So they are very very easy to miss or mi...

The rest areas can occasionally have stuff that’s good, but none of them are in really prime habitat and the lights at them are usually not great. The difference between having your own lights and generator and going to a great spot and collecting at a few rest stops is about 50x.

The new moons are on July 17 and August 16. Although July 17 is about 10 days earlier than normal, I’ve seen years where it peaks that early. There’s always stuff to go after anyways. Usually the Peloncillos and Huachuca Mtns. start a bit earlier than places to the west like Pena Blanca or Harshaw. ...