Twitter User Amazed To See This Elegant Moth Species On Her Porch
It's definitely not every day humans get to see such a beautiful insect up close and personal.
Elana
- Published in Animal Stories
Usually when people think of beautiful flying insects with colorful wings we gush over it is butterflies that immediately come to mind. In fact, we have a tendency to associate moths with bland colors, grey scales, and furry wings that kind of give us the heebeejeebees.
That happens to be a totally unfair and unjustified association though because moths come in quite the varieties and many of them are intricately and vibrantly designed by nature. Globally, there are some 160,000 species of moths so of course some of them are going to really take your breath away with their incredible appearances.
Rebecca Lavoie was lucky enough to catch sight of one of the more beautiful species of moths on the deck of her New Hampshire home recently.
"This moth exists in nature and it's ON MY DECK," she excitedly posted to Twitter.
reblavoieThe Rosy Maple Moth, AKA Cosmoth is a small North American moth that belongs to the family of Great Silk Moths.
The Rosy Maple Moth features a fluffy yellow body and rosy-pink, delicate wings. It looks like something out of a pleasant cartoon about fairies. This moth's territory is vast across North America but because these moths are solitary and nocturnal they don't get seen as often as we'd probably like to see them, for being so beautiful!
hearstappsThe beautiful moth gets it's name of "Rosy Maple Moth" because of both it's beautiful coloring and it's preference for living on maple trees!
meredithcorpWhile the moths are not rare per say, seeing one on your porch in all it's glory is certainly not super common... but Rebecca got to see TWO.
That's because a short while after gushing over the gorgeous moth it came back with a friend.
reblavoieThe University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station the Rosy Maple Moths usually pop up in Spring.
On their website, they write:
"When it is the right time, the adult moths emerge in the late afternoon and mate in the late evening."
bugguideRebecca's tweet of her lovely visitor has been seen over half a million times, so naturally other Twitter users chimed in!
julialhendersonDelight in the uniquely colored insect was plentiful.
dr_barnowlFor Rebecca, she suddenly became lucky enough to repeatedly spot the species on her property!
reblavoieEven if you're not a big fan of insects, you have to admit this one is awfully pretty! Let's hope we see more before the Spring season officially closes.