with half an hour till voting i noticed a couple of moths on my screen .. i decided to do what a rarely do which is take a pic and enter it with very little time to edit etc .. in the past this has never worked in my 'favour' ..
i had 10 minutes to download and edit ..
i have no expectations for this ... but i will be interested to see if anyone guesses what it is ..
its a ghost moth .. with the antennae and the part where the wing joins the body ..
the hair is on the thorax .. but in the pic you can also see what i think are scales which are on the wings ..
the moths were hanging out on the screen during the day .. they were very active last night banging against the windows because of the light .. they look almost as big as small birds when they are flying .. they are about 3 inches long from head to tail . :)
Abantiades latipennis, known as the Pindi moth, is a species of moth in the family Hepialidae. It may also be referred to as a swift moth or a ghost moth, as this is a common name associated with Hepialidae.
Endemic to Australia and identified in 1932, it is most populous in temperate rainforest where eucalypti are prevalent, as the larvae feed primarily on the roots of these trees. Females lay eggs during flight in a scattering fashion. The larvae live for over eighteen months underground, while adult moths survive for approximately one week, as they have no mouthparts with which to feed. The moths are preyed upon by a number of predators, including bats and owls. Brown in colour overall, males are paler and the identifying silver bars of the male's wings are more prominent than those of the female's, with dark margins. Male adults are generally smaller.
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Place: 11 out of 23 Avg (all users): 6.1250 Avg (participants): 6.0769 Avg (non-participants): 6.1818 Views since voting: 859 Views during voting: 90 Votes: 24 Comments: 3 Favorites: 0
I like this one, and wondered what it was. Thanks for the story on it. :-)
BTW - look at this with a square crop (keeping the bottom width and lose the top third of the image).
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