Brown, Banded Moth – Meal Moth
OK, I’ll be up front with you: I really don’t know what kind of moth this is [edit: now I do, see below]. It’s a bit over a centimeter long, and was fluttering around the light in our entryway on August 2 of 2008.
Aside from the light-brown band across the wings, it also has the little fringe on the trailing edge of the wings, and a kind of tuft of hairs on the end of the abdomen.
Also, from underneath it has rather striking pale-green eyes, with a very pronounced “pupil effect”. It looks surprised.
I’ve unfortunately been crazily busy all week, so I haven’t really had time to buckle down and identify this one. So, if anybody recognizes it, I’d love to know what it is.
Update: I think that Carl Strang has identified it in the comments: it looks to be a Meal Moth, Pyralis farinalis. It’s another imported species, the larvae eat stored grain products (grains and flour), and they are found all over the place as a result. We probably got them the same time as we picked up the Indian Meal Moths, from some bags of infested bird seed. The Meal Moths and the Indian Meal Moths are both in the family Pyralidae, but are not all that closely related, in spite of being the same sort of pest.
This particular meal moth wasn’t doing it, but it is fairly characteristic for them to rest with the tip of their abdomen pointing upwards. Thinking about it, I realize that I’ve been seeing these guys for a long time, and I usually do see them with their abdomens pointing up.
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It looks like a Sesame Street character with those eyes.
Moth ID = Grrrr, in my opinion.
A quick page through Covell’s field guide turned up what appears to be a close match: meal moth, Pyralis farinalis. I’ve been enjoying your site, included it in the recommended list on my own blog.
I do believe you are right. It does look like the meal moth. Which would make this yet another introduced species. Thanks! I’ll have to add some more information to the entry based on this.
Hi. I came across this post, after a google search to identify an unusual-looking bug I found in my tea this morning! Needless to say, I didn’t drink that cup of tea, just on sheer principle, but I did pour more from the same pot (brave, am I not?).
Anyway, my identification successful (it was a pseudoscorpion, of all things), I saw that you have photos of moths as well (all your photography here is gorgeous, btw), and since you know of such things, maybe you wouldn’t mind pointing me in the right direction.
Last summer I found a huge moth on the front steps, and took a picture (with my phone, but it came out pretty well, considering it was night). At the time, I wanted to know what kind it was. I searched many websites to identify it, but never found one that looked like it.
Do you know of a site with a very comprehensive gallery for me to search, or a place where I can post said photo for identification that is, so to speak, ‘non-entomologist friendly’? Or would you like to take a look at it?
Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
~ Ruth B
Ruth B:
I’m still having difficulties with moth ID personally, a lot of moths are hard to identify (although some of the ones that are very large or unusually colored are pretty easy)
A good place to start in general is Bug Guide, at http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740 You can browse through their images, or you can create a free account for yourself and upload pictures for the people there to identify. Generally, somebody helps me out within a day or two, and their uploading feature doesn’t require any particular entomological knowledge. One thing to watch is that it is a good idea to crop and reduce your picture to about 1 megabyte or so before posting, for ease of handling.
For moths in particular, you can try the Moth Photographers’ Group at
http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/ I haven’t actually done much on their site because I’m just starting to get serious about photographing moths, but they have instructions for submitting images by email for identification at:
http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/Submit.shtml