Observation date: July 29, 2017
Submitted by: lagunaberry
Specimen type: Photograph
Observation notes: I was very surprised this morning when watering my baby trees and bushes in pots on my porch, and this huge beautiful moth/butterfly? fell between the pots and into a puddle of water, rendering it unable to fly. It attempted to climb the wall of the pot several times and failed, falling back down. I turned off my water and grabbed a stick as I couldn't quite reach it,and it grabbed on until I could use my finger, which it gladly crawled right onto. I inspected it for a moment for injuries and features, took a blurry photo, and then I gently placed it onto my bush, which it again, gracefully crawled onto. I took many photos and even video during its time with me. It was absolutely beautiful and I've never seen anything like it around here, Valencia/Cibola County border of New Mexico on Hwy 6 in the Highland Meadows Neighborhood. It's huge wings (about 4-5" span when opened completely) when resting closed, were a deep black with perfect symmetrical stripes that began up by the head area straight down the wings and then, in almost a mirror image, made a sort of sideways H pattern in almost pure white. But when expanded, had patterns of reddish orange and bright yellow, which from underneath were clearly visible. It's head was also dark black, but had two large yellow circular spots, clearly to appear to be large eyes to a predator, and had small yellow stripes near the mouth as well. The thick body area was bright yellow all along the bottom, black stripes on the sides down it's body and reddish orange and yellow on the back side below the wings. It's legs were dark black with yellow and reddish orange areas only slightly visible. It was very calm with me and allowed me to gently inspect it's features. Finally, after about 15 minutes or so, it began to rapidly flutter it's wings, which I was able to record, for about 40-50 seconds, making a distinct fluttering sound that was fairly loud and audible, and then took flight. It actually floated around my yard for quite some time, which was a beautiful sight. I thought it was a butterfly, but by the FAQ descriptions, seems to be a moth. But this was the largest and most beautiful moth I've ever seen or had contact with, and it was flying in the daytime. We don't have a moth or a butterfly like this in our region that I've ever seen. Most are much much smaller, a third of the size, except one moth I've seen in the past, which was not colorful like this, and I saw it at night. I couldn't find anything like it here in the website and really would love it to be identified. Seems very rare to me, especially here. Magnificent! We have had a mixture of sunny days with random clouds and thunderstorms that mostly don't hit right over my house but the surrounding desert areas with visible rainfall in the distance. Very hot. This morning it was about 65 degrees, sunny with partly cloudy skies and 54% humidity.
Status: Resident
Verified by: jwileyrains
Verified date: August 29, 2023
Coordinator notes: Highly variable and not that well documented, but I'm pretty sure this is A. plantaginis.
