Yellow-Headed Cutworm Moth

2017 January 25

This moth from July 10, 2016 is pretty well camouflaged. It would be even better if it were on actual bark, and not on a dead log that the bark had sloughed off of.

yh-cutworm-moth-dorsal

The reddish-brown forewings with the white band along the trailing edge is unusual enough that I think the best match is the adult moth of the Yellow-Headed Cutworm, Apamea amputatrix

yh-cutworm-moth-face

yh-cutworm-moth-front-part

The caterpillar is one of the garden-pest cutworms, and going by the host list will eat about anything that anyone cares to plant. Although, you know what is really weird about this? Here we have a moth, whose common name is clearly based on what the caterpillar looks like, but when I go online searching for pictures of the caterpillar of Apamea amputatrix, I don’t find any. All I get are pictures of the moths!

I guess that when people find the caterpillars, their first impulse is to squish them, not take pictures of them.

2 Responses
  1. January 31, 2017

    Keep the moths and breed them so you can get photos of the kids?

  2. February 1, 2017

    It’s too late to breed it now, of course, but yeah, that would have worked.

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