Saturday, April 13, 2013

NHM Butterfly Exhibit Visit #9

What I believe to be a Heliconius cydno x Heliconius melpomene/erato (?) hybrid 04-13-13

I had the most delightful and rewarding (I GOT TO HOLD AN ATLAS MOTH!) visit today at my paradise. I had been invited to tag along with a friends trip with her daughter and we went and saw all sorts of things. Wound up in the Hall of Biodiversity and laid eyes on utter epicness:

Just one of MANY displays in the Hall of Biodiversity 04-13-13

Among other wonderful things. I also found out where the library is.......so I'll be investigating that ASAP. I want my books ^^* They have I.F.B Common's Moths of Australia (I had checked their databases) and I want to read it. It's out of print unfortunately so I at least want to read it. I hope one day I'll be lucky enough to obtain a copy somehow to call my own but for now I'd like to just be able to read that magnum opus.

After running around various exhibits I finally got to go see my precious lepidopteran angels.......and as I've said was rewarded greatly as I got to hold an Atlas moth (Attacus atlas). *.*

We (me and a volunteer) had basically rescued the precious angel from being stuck in the window bar thingy. And the poor guy was having a shit fit over my handling it (we're not supposed to disturb the moths & and he was a volunteer and didn't want to get in trouble) which cut my time short holding said precious angel. I did manage to get a hasty video though of my having a happy fit while said volunteer was trying to get me to "hand it over". I'll post that later. Now it's on with the lovelyness"

New Additions:

1. Parthenos sylvia philippinica*
2. Parthenos sylvia lilacina*
3. Heliconius eleuchia *Or it could've been H. sapho or H. cydno?
4. Unidentified orange Charaxes sp.?
5. Heliconius hybrid *Found a pic of this particular one online and I need to find it again to know the ID. This is pending
6. Numerous unidentified Heliconius hybrids, subspecies, etc. *.*
6a. Heliconius melpomene plesseni hybrids ♥

 *Parthenos sylvia philippinica & P. s. lilacina they've both had before but I didn't know that they were subspecies. I thought they were different color forms of Parthenos sylvia. Thanks to my friends Payam & Dave for ID'ing lovely angels. ^^♥

I also saw a Tuffed Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) outside the museum too. So many many birds everywhere that I've never had the pleasure of seeing before. Wonderful!

They also had my mystery swallowtail again and I'm now more then certain (99%) sure that it's Heraclides anchisiades. I'll have a separate post for this as there's alot to rant about.

Happy happy.

ɛïɜ

No comments: