I was sitting in the house the other day when I heard my wife calling me to go our an take a look at something. She has a lot of roses and they are starting to bloom, so usually when she calls me it’s to take a picture of one of them. I’d taken a lot of pictures of her flowers recently and I wasn’t too enthusiastic about going out and taking another.

This time, however, it was something different: a huge green moth. I was even able to measure it: 4 inches long; wingspan also 4 inches.

I had no idea what it was so after taking the pictures I went back into the house and ‘googled’ ‘enormous green moth NY state’. An image like that of the one in our garden was the first to come up. I guess there aren’t that many types of ‘enormous green moth’ in NY state.

It’s a Luna Moth. This one is male. Apparently the male has thicker antennae than the female.

A couple of interesting facts about luna moths. First Luna moth caterpillars click their mandibles (mouth parts) and regurgitate smelly liquids when threatened by predators; Second when a luna moth emerges it doesn’t have mouth parts to feed, it’s sole purpose is to reproduce. In this winged form it lives only one week; Third the tail can apparently fool the echo location used by bats.

Taken with a Sony A77II and Minolta Maxxum AF 50mm f2.8 Macro.