On May 27, 2005 I wrote about an irruption of a population of fall cankerworms (Alsophila pometaria) that had stripped the woods bare in the spring of 2004 and were doing so again in 2005 (but it never got as bad).
And on December 2, 2005 I wrote an entry called, Night of the moths. I experienced thousands of moths flitting all around me despite the cold weather.
It never occurred to me until yesterday that these two natural events are almost certainly related.
Tim Marasco from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources was a speaker at yesterday's conference. He showed a map of forest defoliators that included fall cankerworm; they affected a broad swath of the state following the ridges from northeast to south central PA, sparing the southeast. But there was one non-contiguous area affected that was clearly in and around French Creek State Park. Tim mentioned this anomalous population and that he was in this area when the adults emerged; the moths were all around "just like falling snow."
The light bulb went on.
That's exactly what I saw. The moths I saw in December were likely the adult stage of the larvae I had seen that past spring. Of course there is a multitude of other moth species it could have been, even just in the family that contains the fall and spring cankerworms (Geomedtridae). But it is exciting to have an "aha!" moment even at this late date.
