Belted Leafroller

2015 May 13

This pyralid moth from the porch light on August 10, 2014 wasn’t as tiny as some, but was still pretty small at only 11 mm long[1].

I eventually found a good match in the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America. It looks like the Belted Leafroller, Sciota vetustella.

These are reasonably common little moths, and the caterpillars eat the leaves of basswood (a tree that is quite common around here, particularly in the woods just to the north of our house).

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[1] For scale, here is an uncropped photo of the moth, along with a calibration shot of a metric ruler (individual marks 1 mm) at the same magnification. I should have done this a long time ago. Depending on what size screen you are viewing this on, the moth pictures are around 3 to 5 times actual size.

And here are the other micromoths from the previous few weeks, at the same scale.


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