Tag: nature

Nature: Butterflies and Moths

Green Page Moth 绿页蛾 (Family Uranidae, the Green Migrators)

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In Central America some day you might look up into the blue and see what looks like a great black snake stretching from one end of the sky to the other. You might even see the “snake” slithering from side to side like a real snake dose on the ground, but if you looked at it through your field glasses or a telescope you would see that it was made up of thousands upon thousands of green, tailed moths all determinedly flying from northwest to southeast. Sometimes the great snake appears to drop parts of itself down from the sky and then, if you are in the right place, you see what looks like a river of dark green moths flowing over the surface of the land. Swiftly they rush by you  – day flying moths driven on and on by a frenzy of migration.

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Nature: Butterflies and Moths

Tropical Queen 热带蝴蝶皇后 (Family Nymphalidae, Brush-footed Butterfly)

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Here is a butterfly that seems to have been brought to America by the white man with the slave trade, for it was soon after the slaving ships came from Africa that this wonderful wanderer of the Old World tropics appeared. Its other name is the “Mimic” because it has achieved its great success by mimicking or copying the appearance of a poisonous butterfly of the Old World, Danaus chrysippurs, which looks very much like our own Monarch. So in America also its life must often be saved because it looks a bit like the poisonous Monarch.

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Nature: Butterflies and Moths

Cecropia 大蚕蛾 (Family Saturniidae, Silk Moths)

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With almost a six inch wingspread, this great moth glides through the dusk or flaps gently, like a large bird, down the gloomy aisles of the forest. The male, with its extremely sensitive and widespread antennae, senses the female from miles away and flies excitedly to find her. When the two find each other, the wings, the antennae, everything about them, seem to pulsate and glow with overwhelming joy, and we become suddenly aware that many lesser animals too become touched with the frenzy of love.
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Nature: Butterflies and Moths

Acrea Moth 细斑灯蛾 (Arctidae, Tiger Moths)

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The Acrea Moth is a typical tiger moth, a dancer in the shadows of the evening, a lover of the light that attracts it from far away in the forest. In the meadow it may flit from flower to flower before the deeper dusk closes the petals, but it stays mainly near the trees, seeking especially for white bark on which it can instantly hide by folding the white forewings over the orange hind wings and tail. So startlingly different is the contrast between the white foreward half and the orange and black back half of this insect that it often appears as if two distinct creatures were flying. When one of these suddenly disappears because the moth has landed and folded its wings, one can imagine the confusion of an enemy.

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Nature: Butterflies and Moths

Pearly Wood Nymph 珍珠木仙女 (Family Noctuidae, Nocturnal Moths)

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In the dark shadows of the night loveliness may surround us and we would not know it. This beautiful night moth, like a pearl hidden in the folds of an oyster, must be searched out and found in the darkness to be appreciated. Such a moth sometimes comes to a light, but more often it is captured by putting out a sweet bait on tree trunks to which the moths come. Such a bait is one made of a mixture of decaying bananas, fermented beer and molasses, which some moths seem to love. The collector then goes out very quietly in the night darkness, carrying a flashlight, turning the light carefully on the trees where the bait has been put. What a mysterious adventure this becomes when you see such beauties of the night as the Pearly Wood-nymph of the under-wing moths sipping greedily at the sweet lure.

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