The Sallow Season

Milder late winter evenings in February and March in CenTex can bring a flush of moth activity that marks the onset--at our latitude--of the Spring flight season. On Salton Drive, for instance, by February 21, I've already documented over 50 species of moths and expect the diversity to continue increasing. One element of this early Spring diversity is a set of rather confusable mottled gray-and-white sallow moths in the Noctuid family. Among these are the Figure-Eight Sallow, Grote's Sallow, and Roland's Sallow. I previously uploaded a journal post on the identification of this set of species. Not terribly closely related to the sallows but generally similar in appearance or color scheme are some of the dagger moths in the genus Acronicta. They constitute a whole study course in their own right. Most similar to the present set is probably the Afflicted Dagger. That species tends to fly later in the spring, summer, and fall, but there are plenty of early March records in Central Texas. I also touch on that species briefly in the above post.