A Few More Moths

This week, I was finally able to identify a couple moths that I had captured and photographed two weeks ago. Both of them are micromoths. As you might guess from the name, many micromoths are tiny. There are also a lot of micromoth species, and many are very plainly patterned, so they can be difficult to identify.

In the case of the first moth species, I reached a few false identifications that did not seem quite right before I finally settled on what I think is the correct one. I think this is Glyphidocera septentrionella, which as far as I can tell does not have a common English name. Glyphidocera is among the Gelechioidea, a superfamily of tiny moths with varied habits.

The second moth took me a very long time to get any identification ideas at all. As it turned out, this moth is among the Pyraloidea, another large and diverse superfamily. This is a Broad-banded Eulogia Moth (Eulogia ochrifrontella). The dark band turned out to be quite distinctive, but it required wading through many records to find a good match.

The last one is becoming very familiar to me, as it appears to be very common in this area. This is not a micromoth but a small Noctuid, a Common Idia (Idia aemula).The top view shows its distinctive markings much better.