Barrens Buckmoth Bug Box
Did you miss the Hemileuca maia-themed Bug Box? A few more Deluxe boxes from July 2024 are available now, featuring:
- Male moth pin
- Male moth iron-on patch
- Caterpillars & moths sticker sheet
- Female moth pin
- Male moth sticker
- Fact magnet
- Moth postcard
- Embroidered corduroy hat
A buckmoth’s story begins in a cluster of eggs laid on a scrub oak twig in the fall, where it weathers the bitter winter until it’s time to hatch in late spring. Caterpillars feast on oak leaves and deliver nasty stings if harassed. In late summer, they pupate and go into diapause. Development resumes in the fall, and the imago emerges in September or October. Like the lunar moth and other Saturniid relatives, buckmoth adults have no mouthparts and do not eat. They spend their brief time in search of mates in the dwindling autumn daylight.
The sandy pitch pine/scrub oak habitats (”barrens”) on which these moths depend used to be common throughout eastern North America, but as these types of forests have been nearly obliterated by human activity, this beautiful moth is now threatened in most of its historical range.
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