Butterfly and Moth

After a slow, cool start to summer here in Minnesota, our garden came into its own in late July and early August.  The flowers, birds, and insects have been a delight to watch in their splendid glory.  Even though we have been busy getting the house ready to sell, I have managed to take lots of photos of the flora and fauna.  But I haven't been able to manage posting a blog entry, until now.

One of the lovely insects that has been flitting around is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus).  This female is feeding on butterfly weed; in fact she was holding on for dear life as the wind blustered around.   The blue on the hindwing is seen only on the females.

I have seen her or other females in the garden for several weeks now.  They are quite

large with a wing span of around 6 inches (165 mm) for the females and a little smaller for the males. 

These swallowtails have lovely colors on the upper and undersides of their wings.

The blue (first photo)is more visible from above and the orange is more visible from below.

I find the Eastern Swallowtails to be one of the most beautiful butterflies in North America.

On the other extreme is this moth, Palthis angulalis - Dark-spotted Palthis.  It is in a subfamily called the "litter moths", which reflects their usual habitat.

It is fairly small; that is an oregano leaf it is on in the photos.  And at first glance, it seems drab.  But look at that structure sticking out from its head!  What is that?

From a different perspective, you can see the interesting shape of its wings.  

From above it looks to me like an F16 fighter plane.

In fact, that was how i keyed it out.  I did a Google search on "moths that look like F16s" and found the genus in the 3rd item.

That took me to http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740, a great site that I use pretty often.

  Now if I could only figure out what is going on with that funky schnoz ...