The next of the May 26, 2012 moths is this fine fellow, with his hunchback, his broad pale stripe going back from the head, and his elongated wing spots.
This is about as good of a match
The next of the May 26, 2012 moths is this fine fellow, with his hunchback, his broad pale stripe going back from the head, and his elongated wing spots.
This is about as good of a match as one could ask for to the Cattail Borer, Bellura obliqua. And his feathery antennae mark him as a male.
I kind of like the morose look he seems to be giving me when we zoom in on his fuzzy face:
The caterpillars are particularly known for boring into the stems of cattails, which are very plentiful in the marshy area on the northern part of our property and across the road from us. So I’d probably be able to find the caterpillars of this moth pretty easily if I looked. They also bore into the stems of a few other wetland plants, like Pickerelweed, Arrowhead, and Skunk Cabbage, although of those, cattails are by far the most abundant locally.
Since its food plants all grow in flooded wetland areas, these caterpillars are able to manage in water much better than other kinds of caterpillars. To the point where caterpillars in this genus are sometimes referred to as “divers”. They are sometimes found with their heads underwater, with enough of their bodies exposed that their breathing spiracles can still get air.
 In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a skunk cabbage.
 These moths are probably on the way to re-evolving aquatic larvae. This sort of thing goes on all the time: first an animal evolves to live on land, and loses its aquatic features (like fins and gills and streamlining). Then some of its descendants re-evolve to go back to the water, and end up re-developing similar (but not identical) aquatic features. But one thing that hardly ever seems to get re-evolved is gills. Even after going back to the water, animals evolved from land-living ancestors mostly keep breathing air, even at the cost of some inconvenience. Dolphins, whales, sea turtles, sea snakes, mosquito larvae, drone fly larvae, water bugs, diving spiders – they all kept on breathing air even after re-committing to the water. I think the big