Iowa prairies have some magnificant flowers, and maybe the most magnificant of them is butterfly weed. It is a member of the milkweed family, and like most milkweeds the flowers are very attractive to butterflies.
At the Whiterock Conservancy Bioblitz on Saturday, I noticed a magnificant cutlivated specimen of this plant in the flower gardens. I checked it a few times for butterflies with little luck, but shortly after the final meeting, as people were started to leave I saw a great spangled fritillary on it. I was not fast enough to get a photo of that butterfly, so I watched some of the other insects on it.
I saw a small insect that looked and acted for all the world like a wasp. I did have a clue that it might be something else, however. Closer inspection showed it to be a small moth with clear wings.
This is the lesser peach tree borer, Synanthedon pictipes. Moths have sort of an odd type of identification called “Hodges numbers.” This moth has Hodges number 2550.
Wow, I had no idea there were moths with clear wings. Are there many more?
I am not sure. There seem to be a few in the leaf borer category and they are small and not often seen. There are also a few in the spinx moth category. The snowberry clearwing is not too rare in the U.S. It looks a lot like a bumblebee.