please identify this small moth, black and orange, delta shaped body and wings
Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 1:17 AM
we found this moth on 18/01/09, mid summer, 1100am, approx 27degrees celcius, fine sunny weather, at my house near stockton beach, newcastle on the upper central coast of new south wales australia. it was on a small branch that i cut off a bottle brush tree ‘genus Callistemon’ it is approx 5cm across its wingspan and about 3cm long it is black with distinctive orange markings on its upper wing, it has 2 clear circular ‘windows’ toward its wingtips, it has an orange/pink/red underbody, it has a spiked tail and looks like it may be dangerous. could you please identify it for me, we have extensively searched the CSIRO australan moths website.and have been unsucessful in identifying it.
Dave
-32° 49′ 151° 54′ , on branch near stockton beach, newcastle, new south wales, Australia
Hi Dave,
We actually did identify your Australian Hawkmoth as Cizara ardeniae on the CSIRO website, but there was no information on the species. Once we had the species name, we found a page on the Coprosma Hawk Moth on the Moth Caterpillars of Australia website which we had searched unsuccessfully earlier.
That site has many images of the caterpillars and adult moths with this description: “The moth itself is a handsome dark brown, with white edges to the wings and white bars across the wings and abdomen. It normally rests with these white bars aligned on each side to form a single stripe across the moth. This may give effective camouflage, misleading the eye to see the front and back as separate entities, neither of which is especially shaped like a moth. ” The adult moth was also pictured on a 1991 Australian postage stamp.
