katharinab 的最愛

Was being bitten by a Garter Snake who left when I lifted a leaf to see its head. I'd thought it was a big slug, but found a C.G.Treefrog! Seemed uninjured. I re-buried in same spot. Perhaps the snake will return for it, but I hope not...

Watched this Creature/s for about five minutes and cannot figure out WHAT it is. In a very old Millpond. Appears to have long FIN/S but very coarse ones. Was just under the surface most of the time, then emerging as in photos. Seems Reptilian....? Please Help!?

I was startled to see her just eight feet from where I walked...I quietly moved to take photos, and saw that she tilted her head to listen...then I saw that she'd lost an eye...likely to shot from a hunter. Puzzling what to do, decided to take my forest walk for about an hour, and look at her again..Since Wildlife Rescue here is Closed b/c of C-19 and my Vet was going to be closed in half an hour, options were limited. Most FORTUNATELY, when I came to see if she had her left eye, approaching slowly from the front, when I got about ten feet away, UP she FLEW!!! Apparently not too much the worse for wear! Made me SO happy! Thought I might have to put her in my dogs Crate (Long unused by her and clean) and home to try nursing her....

You know you’ve found a large moth when…

1. After a 40 year career as a wildlife biologist, you can’t believe what you’re seeing is real.
2. Your ruler isn’t long enough to get a good measurement (2nd image), so you go back to get a longer ruler (3rd image) and that isn’t long enough, so you scramble around to find a carpenter’s measuring tape to fully span the wings (4th image).
3. Your astonishment is like the joy of a child on Christmas morning; you start laughing and giggling uncontrollably.
4. The largest moth on your sheet has a wingspan 40X the size of the smallest one.
5. You stay up until 3:30 a.m. journaling about one moth.
6. You start taking selfies...with a moth (last image).

To the best of my ability to measure this critter, the wingspan (with a bit of the tip of the right FW missing) is about 27.8 cm, so it would probably be about 28.5 cm (11.2 in) if it were intact. The species is said to have the largest wingspan of any Lepidopteran in the world.

The moth was initially discovered on the sheet by Mary Kay Sexton. I had overlooked it.

To read more of the story, see:
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/gcwarbler/13211-mothing-in-panama

[See also: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/218581553]

Collector M. Auer, Determination A. Weck-Heimann

External characters:
The following are the external characters: length up to 108.0 mm, maximum body width 10.0, width of anterior sucker 4.0, width of posterior sucker 5.5 mm; gonopores, separated by five annuli; annulation, complete somite five-annulate; body surface, covered with numerous papillae; eyes, five pairs; sulcus, present as a narrow, distinct groove running from the crypt of the median dorsal jaw to the dorsal rim of the anterior sucker; pigmentation, background of dorsal surface grass green, two orange paramedian stripes thin and fragmented, two orange paramarginal stripes broad and encompassing black segmentally arranged quadrangular or rounded spots, lateral margins of body with yellow stripes encompassing black, segmentally arranged rounded spots; the black spots are located at the level of the ganglion on the central annulus (a2) of each segment; venter predominantly black, with metameric pairs of light greenish markings. Quotation from "Utevsky, S.Y., Trontelj, P., 2005. A new species of the medicinal leech (Oligochaeta, Hirudinida, Hirudo) from Transcaucasia and an identification key for the genus Hirudo. Parasitol. Res. 98, 61–66."