Eight-spotted Forester Moth

About the Eight-spotted Forester Moth

The Eight-spotted Forester is the moth that fools everyone - a velvet-black day-flyer with two big cream spots on each forewing, two white spots on each hindwing, and tufts of bright orange fur on its front legs, nectaring at flowers in full sunshine exactly like a butterfly. Most field photographs of it begin with someone paging through the butterfly guide in vain.

It is a true owlet moth that has abandoned the night: the bold pattern and confident daylight flight are thought to advertise distastefulness, and the orange leg tufts waving at flowers add to the costume. Adults take nectar in spring; in Texas the flight is mostly March through May, with a partial second brood in good years.

The caterpillars are as flashy as the adults - banded in orange, black, and white - and feed on grape and Virginia creeper, which makes woodland edges, fencerows, and even backyard arbors likely places to find the species. When alarmed the larvae rear back and can eject a defensive fluid, completing a family act built entirely on looking like trouble.

Look for the adults working spring blooms near vine tangles across the eastern two-thirds of Texas - a two-inch flash of black, cream, and orange that is always worth a second look, and almost always misidentified on the first.