Green-Patched Looper Moth
So, on August 15, 2017, I was pushing my bicycle along the sidewalk in downtown Houghton when I spotted this moth resting on the sidewalk. It had iridescent green patches on the back of its wings,
and when viewed from a slightly different angle, they were distinctly less prominent.
These green patches are a pretty distinctive feature, along with the way that the fur on its thorax is kind of pulled up into a ruff.
So anyway, I’m pretty sure this is a Green-Patched Looper, Diachrysia balluca, since I’m not seeing anything else that looks even vaguely similar.
The other common name for these is “Hologram Moth”, because the iridescent patches look a lot like white-light holograms (at least as far as color and reflectivity, there is obviously no 3-d image here). This is the first one of these I remember ever seeing, and they are apparently fairly uncommon and only found in the northeast and midwest. Bugguide says that their caterpillars are green semi-inchworm-types[1] that eat hops (which I don’t believe grows around here), as well as trembling aspen and raspberries (which definitely do) and wood nettle (which I’m not sure about).
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[1] While the caterpillars are missing some prolegs and move by inching along, they are not geometrids (which are the true inchworms). These are actually a type of owlet moth.
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Superhero cape.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year–thanks for your column.
I was thinking more along the lines of bad hair day