Moth surprise~

Here is another picture of my sheep moth. When I went to check on my bugs I saw something exciting.....
a cluster of caterpillar eggs!!! And later that day I found four more egg clusters!!!! Bringing it to a total of 48 caterpillar eggs!!!

Here is another cluster. It is very rare to find caterpillar eggs in the wild because they are so tiny. I am looking forward to watching these grow from egg, to caterpillar, to moth!!
I will keep posting on their life cycle.

This moth I found on the side of our house. I have tried looking this moth up and I could not figure out what species it is. I will keep researching.

new moth

I was excited to see that another cocoon I wintered over came out today. I have never seen this species of moth before, it is a sheep moth (Hemileuca eglanterina).

Here is my Clouded Sulphers (Colias Philodice) just before I released it. It was great to be able to study it from caterpillar to butterfly!!

Me releasing it. If you look closely you can see it across from my nose starting to fly.

I have been finding a lot of bugs this spring. I found this zebra jumping spider in Mamas lupine.
This bug was also on the lupines leaves it has turquoise top wings with a deep purple wing underneath. I cannot find this bug in my books, anyone know what it is??
In the fall I found two cocoons that I wintered over in the garage. I was excited to see that they both emerged from their cocoons, they are Virginian tiger moths.