A caterpillar and two moths

[steorra]

Yesterday I went for a walk in the woods with a couple friends. We saw a big fat green caterpillar on the path. It was probably about as wide as my finger. It had rows of little orange dots along its sides that looked like they had little hairs projecting from them. We weren't sure if it was alive, but my friend picked it up with a leaf to move it off the path, and it wriggled.

Later we saw a white-and-black moth on the wall of a restaurant where we were waiting for take-out.

That moth and its wing patterns made me think of a moth of a different sort that I saw in August last year. It was on one of the choir music stands at my church. I took it outside on a piece of sheet music and it eventually flew away. It was dark brown with lighter-brown criss-cross-y patterns on its wings.

If anyone has any tips on what any of these are, I'm interested.


(Click through for bigger pictures.)

The caterpillar:


Yesterday's moth:


Last year's moth on the music stand:


Last year's moth outside:

Comments

[cmcmck]

I have no idea but they are wonderful! :o)

[steorra]

Thanks!

[steorra]

I think the caterpillar might be either a Luna moth (Actias Luna) or a Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus), which are both in the Saturniinae subfamily.

[steorra]

It doesn't look like the Luna moth lives on the West Coast, so I'm guessing it's a Polyphemus moth.

[steorra]

I'm wondering if yesterday's moth is a female (Asian) gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar (asiatica), but I'm not sure. The wing markings look bolder on my moth than on most gypsy moth pictures. And the head of my moth doesn't really look fuzzy enough.

[steorra]

I think I figured it out! I think it's a phantom hemlock looper (Nepytia phantasmaria), of which there's apparently an outbreak in our area this year.

[steorra]

I think last year's moth was a tiger moth of some sort, likely in the genus Grammia. I'm having a hard time pinning it down to a species level, but one significant feature seems to be that the abdomen/hindwings seem to be the same pale brown as the forewing markings, rather than being, for instance, orange or pink.

That's still a lot closer than I got in previous identification attempts - and only happened because I happened to see a picture of Grammia virgo while I was trying to identify yesterday's moth. Grammia virgo clearly isn't the correct species, though, based on range (doesn't come as far west as the coast) and body colour.

[leecetheartist]

If you post them to iNaturalist you might get some positive i.d.'s