Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/9/2020– Macro Luna

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

**Baking a carrot cake.** There is plenty of time to cook these days – a special dessert is always welcome. I opted for a variation of a recipe I found online…with some modifications:

Whole wheat flour rather than white
Heaping teaspoon of cinnamon
½ cup less sugar since I was using applesauce and sweetened coconut
No pineapple and since I didn’t have the juice I used a tablespoon on lemon juice and then added water to make 1/2 cup liquid
No nuts
No frosting
Made cupcakes rather than a larger cake (We enjoyed cupcakes right out of the oven with butter, later with orange marmalade or ginger preserves…or reheated with butter). I had enough batter left to make a small sheet cake we will probably freeze for later.

**Noticing that the** **Dark Eyed Juncos** **are gone**. I looked back at our birdfeeder camera and the last day they were recorded at the feeder was 4/6. Last year they left around the same time. In 2018 they were still around on 4/7 but were gone by the 9th.The birds are only in our area for the winter. They may go north for the rest of the year…or just a little west to the higher elevations of the Appalachians.

Blooming azaleas. Several buds have opened since yesterday. I took pictures between the rain showers.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

And now for the second installment of macro photography with our mail-order bugs. Today I am featuring the Luna Moth. It’s the one pictured in the upper right of this picture – our order from The Butterfly Co.

I saw one at a Missouri rest stop last summer; they can be found in the US east of the Great Plains. So - Luna moths are native to Maryland – like the Cecropia Moth. It’s smaller and not as brightly colored. The antennae of the male Luna Moth are tan colored rather than deep brown of the Cecropia’s. But the antennae are arranged similarly in pairs along the rib.

The wings have eye spots that are very different than the Cecropia. The Luna’s have a clear membrane in the center! The bit of color seen is the color of the Styrofoam that The Butterfly Co. used to pen the specimens. Also notice that the ‘scales’ on the Luna wing look more hair-like.