As I was photographing and databsing the Cicindelinae from the collections of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science I came across this specimen collected on the 10th June 1921, Chicago Illinois. The beetle is Cicindela hirticollis hirticollis (could be a boldly marked ssp rhodensis as they readily intergrade along their boundaries) and is one…
This beautiful animal is a moth I reared from Quercus palmeri down in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona. It’s in the family Gracillariidae and most likely in the genus Acrocercops – according to Dave Wagner it may represent a new species, but that’s not an uncommon thing with small moths. It was fairly abundant, so…
Today’s moth is a stunning micro and another creature from Barb Bartell’s back yard in the Rockies. To the best of my knowledge it’s a species of Mompha (Coleophoridae), probably claudiella,but I don’t have a positive ID on this bug yet. Once I start digging through the micros from this site there are sure to…
To reignite the Monday Moth series here is a stunner: Melemaea magdalena (Geometridae). This rare beauty has previously only been known from scattered localities across the mountain west and only from a few individuals every other season. That is until Denver Museum volunteer Barbara Bartell began inventorying moths on her property near Golden Gate Canyon…
Leave it to Denver to combine two things perfect for this blog – entomology and skepticism! If you haven’t seen these clips then take a second to watch the video above. At the very least this appears to be a real phenomenon, camera crews from the news station were able to record the very same…