Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

@earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social

545 Followers 1834 Following

#ornithology #ecology, bird nerd, Mothra, she/they, looking for work!, banner by James Smith 📸, @erlynerdgetbird from twitter

A small waterfall tumbles off of a large, gently sloped rock face into a wide pool below. Trees frame the scene. Raindrops gently fall onto the surface of the water, creating small circular ripples that quickly disappear.
Two people standing under a colorful banner that reads “Dr. Kit Straley congratulations!” The banner has a bird with a graduation style cap.
The video begins on a tiny (several mm long) green caterpillar with a brown face capsule, crawling along the edge of an oak leaf. It pans over to a large (several cm long), soft, electric green caterpillar with small orange and pink dots, sporadic long hairs, and a chestnut brown face.
A fifth instar Promethea caterpillar on sassafras leaves. The camera is focused on its posterior, where a pattern of 3 black marks looks like a cartoon face.
The video starts focused on a small thin (several mm long) yellow and black striped caterpillar on a leaf. It pans over to a large (~4-5 cm long) and chonky pale blue caterpillar with small black spots, 4 red knobs on its back near its head, and 1 yellow knob towards the end.
The view inside of a small tupperware container full of Polyphemus moth eggs and newly hatched caterpillars. There are many. The eggs are cream colored ovals with a thick brown band and are tiny! roughly 3 mm. There are also little green caterpillars with brown faces crawling out of the eggs and up the side of the container.
A small tupperware container full of Polyphemus moth eggs. These were laid by 2 females. I haven’t counted them but there are definitely over 100. The females are only held for egg collection for one night, and are then released into the wild to continue laying and finish their life cycle. I raise a subset of the eggs to pupation, and the rest are released as 2nd or 3rd instars in my unofficial “head start” program (I raise moths for science but also as a hobby, these are hobby eggs). The eggs are small (~3mm), oval, and cream with a thick brown band. Dark splotching on the eggs in this photo comes from the adhesive the female uses to attach them to plants when she lays them.
A female Promethea moth rests with her wings open. She is standing on the green fabric bottom of a mesh cube. Her body is dark raspberry red and fluffy. Her antennae are feathery and dark yellow. Her wings have complex patterns and many colors - dark red, burnt orange, raspberry pinks, tan, black, and cream. Her forewings have a dramatic black spot near the tips. All of her wings have a thick tan border, and the hindwings have extra raspberry splotches in the border. There is a scallop-edged white line in the middle of her wings, and on the side of that line closest to her body her wings have more contrasting and vibrant colors.
A male Polyphemus moth rests with its wings open upon my hand. In the background there is white fabric and a pile of giant silk moth cocoons. The moth’s wings are a beautiful red-brown. There are 2 dramatic “eyespots” on the hindwings that are black with yellow centers and blue edging. The leading edge of the front wings is a thick salt and pepper gray line. The antennae are large and feathery. Each wing has a very special small oval “window” that you can see through, in those sections they are missing the scales that give them gorgeous colors everywhere else.
The camera is slowly panning back and forth inside a mesh fabric cube full of 12 adult female Promethea moths as they gently flex their wings. The wings of the moths are red, orange, tan, peach, rosy pink, maroon, and black with complex patterns. The bodies of the moths are fluffy and raspberry red with a pair of white stripes running down the sides. Their antennae are a golden yellow.
A female luna moth hanging upside down and slowing expanding her wings. She has a white fluffy body, dark magenta legs, yellow antennae, and spring green wings. She is surrounded by shiny silver metal in a criss cross pattern because I overwinter my cocoons in minnow traps. There are a few small droplets of rain on her wings.
A close up on a black cat’s upside down face with a single little white tooth peeking out of its mouth