Moth talk, and screening new movie, Nocturnes, this Friday evening, Franklin Park Conservatory

 

A male Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus) stares us in the face.

Franklin Park Conservatory, at 1777 East Broad Street in Columbus, is hosting what should be an interesting evening with the moths this Friday, October 10. The event starts at 7pm and begins with a talk by your narrator entitled Mysterious Moths: The Darker Side of Butterflies. That'll be all about the role of moths within the eastern deciduous forest region of eastern North America, the important roles that they play, and their numerous curious quirks. The program will be rich in imagery, needless to say.

Following that, there'll be a screening of a fascinating movie, Nocturnes. Two researchers illuminate the incredible diversity of moths in an especially biodiverse region of the Eastern Himalayas. The movie is exceptionally well done and exposes the audience to a mind-blowing assemblage of seldom seen moths.

All of the details are RIGHT HERE and hope to see you there!

Toadlike Bolas Spider

 

As always, click the image to enlarge

We were ecstatic to encounter this Toadlike Bolas Spider (Mastophora phrynosoma) during an epic nocturnal outing at Fernald Preserve in Hamilton County, Ohio, back on September 13. She has spun a simple silken trellis underneath a redbud leaf, and from this position is hunting moths.

The large, bulbous spider (which looks remarkably similar to a bird dropping when at rest) emits pseudo pheromones from her body that mimic those of certain groups of moths. Males of those species flutter closer, thinking a female moth is nearby. When one gets in range, the spider flicks that sticky silken droplet on its fishing line of death and snares the hapless creature.

Upon impact, the tightly woven sticky silken ball essentially explodes, further entangling the moth, which is then reeled in and eaten. We actually watched a moth come in, land on the leaf over the spider, then flutter downward at which point the bolas spider began whirling its glue-like droplet at it. It missed, but it was amazing how fast the spider reacted and the rapidity with which it could fling its bolas.

Katydids have their ears near their knees

 

Up close with a Greater Anglewing katydid (Microcentrum rhombifolium). Katydids "sing" with their wings, rubbing the bases together in a process known as stridulation. One wing contains a file, the other a scraper. In the case of the Greater Anglewing, males create a series of soft clicks, as if two pebbles are being tapped together. It stands to reason that these insects would have good hearing, as males create the songs to attract females or maintain unique territories. Indeed, they do hear well, courtesy of ears on their forelegs, just below the knee. It's that elongate vertical slit on the katydid's foreleg in the photo.

Katydids and their orthopteran allies represent the genesis of intentional sound. Fossil records of katydid relatives date back 250 million years ago, replete with the file/scraper sound system. Although life on earth began over 3.5 billion years ago, the earliest animals were mute. Animal sound didn't originate until the katydids came along, and over the eons the faunal soundscape has evolved into a gorgeous, complex aural tapestry that involves legions of different animals making their own types of music.

Alas, the orthopteran symphony will soon cease at northerly latitudes, like where I live in central Ohio. But they're still going strong, and we've probably got another two weeks or so to enjoy their ancient melodies.

A greater Anglewing poses on the foliage of Winged Sumac (Rhus copallinum). The large katydid is a remarkable leaf mimic.

An Ohio farm attracts migratory congregations of monarch butterflies

Dozens of monarchs in a silver maple/Jim McCormac

NATURE-WILDLIFE

Jim McCormac

Columbus Dispatch

September 21, 2025

An Ohio farm attracts migratory congregations of monarch butterflies

 

"The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity."

— George Carlin

Monarch butterflies undergo a complete metamorphosis, or a four-part life cycle. Life begins as a tiny egg, which soon hatches an elfin larva, or caterpillar. The caterpillar does much of the heavy lifting on the road to butterflydom. It is an eating machine, increasing its body mass scores of times as it grows through, in the case of the monarch, five molts.

Life is fraught with peril as a caterpillar, and many are eaten by predatory insects, birds and even some amphibians and reptiles. Less than 10% of caterpillars survive to enter phase three, the chrysalis. This seemingly low survival rate is better than most species of butterflies and moths. Monarchs' host plants are milkweeds, which are infused with toxic cardiac glycosides. The caterpillar, and the butterfly to come, sequester these poisons, which render them distasteful if not unpalatable to many would-be predators.

Butterfly chrysalises are magical chambers of transformation in which the tubular caterpillar morphs into an entirely different body form. The monarch takes chrysalis creation to a high art form. The two-inch-long shiny case is a beautiful emerald green, adorned with a showy black and gold band. As the chrysalis ages, it becomes opaquer and toward the end, the black and gold butterfly can be seen within.

After about two weeks, the butterfly emerges. From egg to butterfly takes about a month.

America’s best-known butterfly is a source of endless fascination. Perhaps the most incredible aspect of the monarch is its incredible migration. Virtually all monarchs breed in North America north of Mexico, some as far north as southern Canada. Excepting a small resident population in southern Florida, the butterflies stage a mass migration to oyamel fir forests in the mountains of central Mexico. Some butterflies travel over 3,000 miles from their site of origin.

Once ensconced in the Mexican fir forests, the gregarious monarchs blanket the trees. Accurate estimates of individual numbers are nearly impossible, so researchers measure the acres covered by the butterflies. Assessments of the wintering population began in 1993, and the highest number of butterflies was in winter 1996-97, when a whopping 45 acres of forest was cloaked in butterflies.

As time has elapsed, it’s clear that monarchs are on a downward spiral. The lowest winter count was in 2013-14, when only little more than an acre and a half of forest harbored butterflies. Winter 2023-24 found butterflies in only 2.2 acres of oyamel forest. For the first decade of wintering ground surveys, monarchs covered an average of 21 forest acres. For the last decade, that’s plummeted to 11 acres. An estimated 80% of the migratory eastern population of monarchs has vanished since surveys began.

Ever-increasing use of herbicides and insecticides, habitat loss due to various development, disease and degradation of wintering habitat are all key contributors to monarch reductions.

But there is much that people can do to help. And some people are helping on a grand scale.

Lorene and Robert Miller of Plain City, in Madison County, farm 120 acres. Their farming practices are organic: no fertilizers or pesticides, use of cover crops, composting to increase soil health and crop rotation. Every three years, the Millers plant large swaths of their land in red clover, which enriches nitrogen in the soil. After the growing season, the clover is tilled into the soil, further enriching it.

A fabulous benefit of the clover crops is the formation of enormous migratory congregations of monarchs. The butterflies are drawn to the clover flowers, and gather there en masse, and form impressive nighttime roosts in an adjacent windbreak of Norway spruce and silver maple.

The Millers first documented the monarch swarms six years ago, then again three years ago, and in keeping in sync with the clover crop cycle, they are back again this fall.

I visited the Miller farm on Sept. 10 and was stunned by the spectacle of 1,000 or more monarchs swarming the trees as they came in from the fields near dusk. Dozens of fellow butterfly enthusiasts were there as well.

One visit was not enough, and I returned with Shauna on Sept. 14. That’s when I made the accompanying photo. The butterflies in my shot are just the tip of the lepidopteran iceberg. Almost as cool as seeing the butterflies was observing the reactions of the onlookers. Hundreds of people from as far as Kentucky and Michigan have visited. Admirers formed a ring around a favored silver maple roosting tree, staring in slack-jawed reverence at the scores of beautiful butterflies.

The migratory swarm will soon disperse, probably by the time that you read this, and the butterflies will continue to work their way south to the Mexican fir forests. They’ve still got about 1,700 miles to go to get there.

Major thanks to the Miller family for allowing so many visitors to come revel over the monarchs. And even more thanks for their excellent environmental stewardship and strong land ethic.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

Elk!

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

The Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. This is one of the famed viewing spots for Elk (Cervus canadensis) in the eastern U.S.

I presented a talk at the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference in Cullowhee, North Carolina back on July 17, and Shauna was able to come along on that gig. As an aside, that conference is one of the best plant conferences I have been to. Huge crowd of like-minded plant enthusiasts, the overall vibe is awesome, there's lots of knowledgeable speakers, and great field trips. As an enormous bonus, attending inserts you into one of the regions of richest biological diversity in the eastern United States. The mountains of western North Carolina are a botanical paradise in utterly stunning landscapes.

For us, it was an easy diversion to wend our way northward and through the Great Smoky Mountains and Tennessee on the way home. Targets were many on this return trip to Columbus, but Elk was high on the hit list. So, we made sure we were in the Cataloochee Valley bright and early and were rewarded with beautiful foggy landscapes.

It didn't take long to spot an Elk. Indeed, we about had to shoo this cow off the road. I had visions of distant herds in the foggy vegetated meadow in the first image and was looking forward to such scenes. It was not to be, and in this general area, this semi-tame cow was the only Elk that we saw,

Things would get better, though.

An Elk in richly forested habitat. The huge ungulates spend much time in woodlands, and I really wanted shots of them in forests. At one point, we came across a small group of cows in a grassy opening and were watching and photographing them when the herd began moving towards the forest, which was bisected by a beautiful mountain stream.

Anticipating their movements, we dashed into the woods and into a position that would allow photos of the animals in the woods, and hopefully, in the river if they decided to cross that.

Sure enough, and lucky us, the elk did cross the stream, and we were in position for shots. While many Elk photos that one sees are in meadows, that's probably mostly because that's where it is easiest to see and photograph them. Hence, my interest and shooting the ungulates in forested habitats, where they also spend much time, more so than the meadows, probably.

Elk are truly impressive mammals. Cows can weigh in excess of 600 pounds, and big bulls can eclipse a half ton. Watching the big beasts for an extended period in their forested habitat really made me think about the ecological role they must have played at one time, when they were far more common and widespread. Many plant species have coevolved with mammalian disturbance, such as the so-called buffalo clovers. There are two species of those, and one, the Buffalo Clover (Trifolium reflexum) seemed to favor more wooded environs than its more famous brethren, the Running Buffalo Clover (T. stoloniferum). Both clovers have become much rarer, presumably in part due to the loss of large ungulates such as elk and buffalo.

Unfortunately, humans hunted out Elk very early in the eastern U.S. For instance, they were shot out of Ohio by the end of the 1830's, and this was before anyone would have been documenting much if anything in the way of elk-plant relationships.

Here's a young bull Elk that I photographed in Presque Isle County, Michigan, on May 26, 2018. Like the animals that we imaged this year in the Smokies, the northern Michigan Elk are the result of reintroductions. Efforts to reestablish the big mammals have met with some success, and herds now exist in Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. However, the overall landscape is quite different than pre-settlement and there aren't that many large relatively unpopulated regions conducive to Elk reintroduction. Nonetheless, it's great to have Wapiti (the native Shawnee name ("white rump") back on the eastern landscape, even if only a minute fraction of the numbers that once existed.

Caterpillars, Part III

Here's the last of lots of cool larvae found over the past two weeks or so. Most of them were discovered and photographed during this event RIGHT HERE.

Spotted Apatelodes (Apatelodes torrefacta) are cool cats indeed, although we must watch getting a bit jaded to them, as they turn up quite commonly. They resemble tubular Pomeranian dogs and come in two color forms: this lemony hue, and bright white. Apatelodes (Ah-pat-eh-lo-dees) are always crowd- pleasers, especially once you show people the party trick that follows.

As always, click the photo to enlarge

They have bright cherry-red booties! Although, as this is mostly a science blog, I suppose we should refer to them as anterior prolegs.

Spotted Apatelodes caterpillars are quite cooperative, and it's pretty easy to coax them onto a small petiole or twig, which then can be rotated for optimal booty photography.

A closer view of those cherry-colored anterior prolegs. Quite showy and equally pleasing in both yellow and white forms of the caterpillar. The million-dollar question: why are they bright red? Insofar as I know, this remains one of life's great mysteries. Many brilliant minds have pondered this question for much of recorded history, yet it remains a deep and apparently unfathomable enigma.

Here's another cat with spotted in the moniker, the Spotted Phosphila (Phosphila miselioides). It is an extreme specialist, eating only greenbriers (catbriers) in the genus Smilax. Greenbriers are not very beloved. They form low shrubby tangles in woodland understories and are heavily armed with stout thorns. Those of us that hunt cats love greenbriers though, because they host this caterpillar and the one to follow and also THIS WACKO SPECIES, a true Holy Grail of caterpillar hunters.

A bevy of Turbulent Phosphila caterpillars (Phosphila turbulenta) rests communally on the underside of a Greenbrier leaf. This species is highly social and when you find one, there's nearly always plenty of others. Turbulent Phosphilas appear two-headed, and it can be hard to tell which end is which. The rear of the caterpillar is more prominently marked with larger white spots.

Head on with a feeding Sycamore Tussock caterpillar (Halysidota harrisii). It is well-named and there is only one plant species that it could be eating: Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis). It is another extreme specialist, but its host plant is very common and so are the caterpillars.

A Virginia Creeper Sphinx (Darapsa myron) feeds on the leaf of a Riverbank Grape (Vitis riparia). It is a specialist on members of the grape family (Vitaceae), which in Ohio includes five native species of grapes, and two creeper species. Plants in this family host a variety of interesting, beautiful caterpillars, and we always give them the once-over when hunting cats.

The interesting slant-faced caterpillar of the Walnut Sphinx Moth (Amorpha juglandis). National Wildlife Magazine once did a short piece on this oddity, featuring an image taken by your narrator. The cat is particularly notable as it can make loud hissing sounds when threatened, typically violently thrashing its body at the same time. The effect is remarkably snake-like.

This is one of a number of sphinx cats that specialize on ash, the Waved Sphinx (Ceratomia undulosa). Even though the invasive Emerald Ash Borer has been hard on our ashes, and their deaths due to that beetle has altered the composition of some woodlands, ash remains common. As far as I know, this sphinx uses all of Ohio's five ash species (all in the genus Fraxinus).

Perhaps suggestive of a sphinx but in a different family is this White-dotted Prominent (Nadata gibbosa). It eats oak, primarily, but also other members of the Fagaceae family such as beech. A rather large, handsome cat, last instar (fully grown) specimens can engage in a remarkable snake-like display when threatened. First, the caterpillar will bare its mandibles, creating the illusion of scary eyes, then slowly sway back and forth like a cobra in the snake charmer's basket. Pushed further, it'll coil its body and throw its head over the loop in another snake-like display. I have pictures of those poses HERE and HERE.

Beautiful in a rather indescribable way is this Wavy-lined Heterocampa (Cecrita biundata). It mimics its leafy autumnal surroundings remarkably well, the dappled browns on its body suggesting aging necrotic leaf patches. This species is more catholic in its diet than many caterpillars, eating many species of woody plants.

One of my personal favorites is this Witch Hazel Dagger (Acronicta hamamelis). It is yet another hyper-specialist, eating only its namesake plant (Hamamelis virginiana).

Finally, we will end this caterpillar tour with a butterfly, even if these lesser day-flying moths only constitute a tiny fraction of a percent of the lepidopteran species that occur over the Eastern Deciduous Forest region. This one is particularly cool though. It is a Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus).

Here's a head-on view of the Zebra cat noshing on a leaf edge. And that could only be one species of leaf: Pawpaw (Asimina triloba). Like many of the moths that I have shared, it too is highly specialized.

To truly practice conservation of biodiversity, it is necessary to protect and provide habitat for ALL plant species. That's about 1,850 species just in Ohio, and we haven't done a particularly good job. Over one-third of our native plant species are officially listed as endangered, threatened, potentially threatened, or extirpated (no longer known to occur in Ohio) by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Here's the LINK TO THE LIST.

It's the little things like caterpillars, fostered by native flora, that are the building blocks of biodiversity. And far few too many people, even those involved in management of natural resources, have a good grasp of that. Fortunately, with the ever-increasing popularity of moths, more and more people are tuning into a greater ecological awareness, and that should only be good for true conservation of our natural resources into the future.

Monarchs galore!

A slight interruption from the caterpillar programming - I should have one more upcoming post featuring some really cool larval finds from recent days.

For the third time in six years, a large group of migratory Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) has formed on the farm of Lorene and Robert Miller of Plain City, Ohio. There are least a thousand butterflies, and at least on peak days, probably a lot more.

I'll post a more detailed story about this phenomenon later, but for now, here's two images from last night's visit.

Dozens of Monarchs cloak a favored maple. This was just the tip of the lepidopteran iceberg.

A Monarch rests atop a Norway spruce. A small windbreak of these trees is also a favored nighttime roost.

PHOTO NOTES: An issue for photographers with photographing this roost at its maximum glory is light. Many of the butterflies do not come in until the sun has nearly set, and some are still returning after the sun has set. Thus, in the shady environs of the silver maple above, which is also blocked from the sun by the spruce windbreak, ISO levels can and do rise to very high levels at prime time, even with lenses wide open and shutter speeds as low as one can reasonably manage.

To combat this problem, I used the amazing Canon 200mm f/2 lens for the roost shots. The second image of the Monarch in gorgeous late day light perched on a spruce, was made with the Canon 400mm f/4 DO II. Light was no issue there. But it certainly was around the maple tree. For those images, I shot the 200mm lens wide open at f/2, and as slow as 1/60 second (the lens also has superb image stabilization which greatly improves one's ability to handhold). For the image above, my settings were f/2, 1/100, and ISO 2500. That kind of ISO, while higher than I would prefer, is processed well by the Canon R5. Also, I was able to compose images such that very little, or no cropping was necessary. A bit of noise reduction via Photoshop later, and all looks good. Some photogs around me were reporting ISO's as high as 25,600 by the time I made this image, and most had stopped shooting by then.

While wildlife photographers might not have a lot of use for a relatively short focal range 200mm lens, it is worth its weight in gold at times due to that huge f/2 aperture. This lens is also almost eerily sharp, even wide open. I just tried to find a situation where as many butterflies as possible in the center of the composition were pretty much in the same plane and focused on those. Then, let the chips fall where they may. I personally love the look that this bokeh monster creates at open apertures (and even when stopped way down).