Mothers put up light in garden for butterfliers

The insect-attracting "Black Light" , with moth
Shakespeare Garden = 8/9/06


Last night was the annual picnic of the New York chapter of the North American Butterfly Association - locally known as the Butterfly Club. Many Central Park birdwatchers and moth lovers are members of the butterfly club. Indeed, last year the CP Mothers presented a well-attended slide show, The Moths of Central Park, to the Butterfliers. After all moths are Lepidopterans too, morphologically indistinguishable from butterflies, though in most cases moths are nocturnal, and butterflies have a little knob on the end of their antennae]

The Mothers agreed to put up their black light in the Shakespeare Garden after dark, as a featured event of this year's picnic. Below are some of the highlights of the moth part of the evening. [The picnic part took place at Turtle Pond.]


A Greater Black-letter Moth --Xestia dolosa on sheet, with a micromoth, [probably Callima argenticinctella] --8/9/06



A Katydid [possibly a Fork-tailed Bush Katydid]

PS Many readers identified the green orthopteran I posted a few days ago as a katydid. No one was brave enough to try to narrow it down to a species. My own guess: A Drumming Katydid - Meconema thalassinum. This is an introduced European species first discovered in the U.S. in 1957, and now extending its range.


A female Eastern Pondhawk [Erythemis simplicicollis]
This large dragonfly landed on our sheet, and thence on a hand.


The owner of the hand: James Smith--age 3. James is the youngest and one of the most exuberant members of the Central Park [non-maternal] Mothers, along with his equally enthusiastic older brother Aidan, aged 6, and his father and mother, David and Paula Smith [age unknown, but definitely young]

All photos by M. Winn