Moths are back!

After two years I’m beginning to see the moth population in our garden slowly recovering from the frequent chemical baths that became part of the hygiene theater of the pandemic. One of my favourites is the one in diaphanous tutu with a gold border that you see in the featured photo. It was a little more than two centimeters across in size. Most moths do not have common names, so I know this only by its binomial Cydalima laticostalis. It is a member of the grass moth family, Crambidae. I should start calling it the gold-and-satin moth. Maybe it will catch on.

I find it useful to think of moths first by size. The two that you see above are between one and two centimeters across. One of the reasons moths do not have common names is that it is very hard, impossible, to pinpoint species by sight alone. The spotted yellow moth is clearly a member of the genus Conogethes, but this is a massively speciose genus. An attempt at DNA barcoding found that there are many species which were not recognized as different until the genomes were studied. By appearance this moth seems to be a member of the Conogethes punctiferalis complex, one of the many agricultural pests. The other, ivory and chocolate banded moth, is a member of the genus Nosophora. Both these are grass moths, in the family Crambidae.

This moth is smaller, about half to one centimeter across. It is enough of a pest that it has a name: a teak leaf skeletonizer. It is a member of the Paliga damastesalis species complex, containing also the P. rubicundalis and the P. machoeralis. It is impossible to tell these three grass moths apart by sight. I had no desire to extract its DNA in order to identify it better.

Previously I’ve completely ignored moths which were less than half a centimeter across, like these two. But now with my macro lens I can see that they are both likely to be grass moths, ie, in the family Crambidae. That brilliant wine red colour should make this quite recognizable, but all the web sites I consult for identification also seem to ignore these smaller moths. Let me see whether I can nudge them to start working on these smaller ones. Whether I can identify them or not, I’m glad to see that the local population of moths is slowly recovering from the COVID-induced hygiene theatre of spraying everything around us with strong pesticides. Perhaps the bee-eaters and fly-catchers will also be back in a year or two.

Cabbages and kings

In the evening we walked around the Gateway of India. When I walk here, I sometimes think of the enormous expense of that last hurrah of the British empire, the Delhi Durbar of 1911, in which George V and his consort Mary proclaimed their claim as the emperor of India. The ceremony was held in Delhi, but the king visited Mumbai. The whole seafront was realigned, and the gateway was built to commemorate that visit. Less than half a century later, the last British troops in India left for a voyage home from this point. I got a nice light on the harbour, along with the shadow of the Taj Mahal hotel on the gateway. The rise of Indian traders was the shadow that grew to engulf and expel the empire. Mumbai was the epicenter of that struggle. a fact that is written in its geography, if only one looks. I’m glad I caught those two pigeons right above the gate.

“That’s not what you think about all day,” I’m sure The Family will remind me. No, of course, not. I also take the time to look at tiny moths which I can’t identify. Like this beauty, a little over a centimeter long, hanging from the ceiling. The end of the abdomen seems to end in coremata, a organ involved in excreting male pheromones. They are common across many lepidoptera species, and not of much help in identification. The shape of the snout and the way it holds its antennae back along its abdomen could mean that it belongs to the family Crambidae. Whatever it is, it does look good.