Or do you see her rather. After a good 15 minutes of digging through my boys' big Japanese insect book and then googling in English still nothing okay Japanese and Ah-HA! Found it! It's a her. This is s he.
It's a Hagurumatomoe -- ハグルマトモエ -- in Japanese. I can't find a common name for it in English, just the Latin Spirama helicina name for it on Wikipedia. I thought its markings looked like a bird's face, the orange there being the beak and the round spots the eyes, but on the web I read they resemble a snake's face, which I guess I can see too. Either way it's some awesome natural selection action there though ain't it!
Things like this fascinate me to no end. I wasn't always this way though I don't know why. It's like for whatever reason I entered a second childhood after I started having kids of my own just before turning 40. Since then I've become more and more fascinated with slithering, jumping, flying and hopping and climbing things we find, and heaven knows there's no shortage of such things here on the Izu Peninsula of Honshu, Japan.
The most awesome shot to the top of my coolest bugs ever list first time I realized it's a bug and not a hummingbird is the スズメが. Or maybe it's written スズメ蛾. Japanese ugh! Whichever the case in English it's called a hummingbird hawk moth. I lived here forever it seemed before finally noticing it one day after another suzume bug, the infamous and downright scare the pants right off ya make ya run like hell suzumebachi Yak Killer Hornet biggest hornets on earth thwarted a hike up Zoyama for me and the boys.
The boys were still really young we'd passed by some buzzing around on the way up "It's okay don't bother them and they won't bother you" I said as always and kept on climbing till two dudes came running down the mountain with terror in their eyes. Seriously I don't think they could've looked more scared if Jason was chasing them with a chainsaw. One of them had been stung, the feeling of which is described on the Wikipedia entry as being penetrated with "a hot nail". As they bolted past us in the opposite direction I distinctly recall one screaming "Shinjyao!" (You'll die). So hey boys what'tya say we turn back!
We'd just started hiking and the mommy lady to the trailhead taxi driver was still at the hairdresser, which conveniently enough was located in a private residence right there near the trailhead, so we waited outside. The saying in these parts that things come in threes proved true that day because we had two more interesting bug encounters while waiting.
The first was me picking up a length of bamboo only to have a giant ムカデmukade (centipede) crawl out the end of it and over my wrist before I squealed like a little girl, jumped three feet in the air and sent it flying to the ground. And the latter was meeting スズメが hummingbird hawk moths for the first time. I took picture after picture and as has been my method since this buggy fascination began I started searching online once home to find out what kind of critter it was. Only thing is I wasn't searching for a bug, I was searching for "hummingbird" and eventually found that no, this is a freaking moth!
Immediately the cool FCC biology teacher's lesson on convergent evolution presented itself forefront in my mind. I'll be damned if it ain't true! Not that I disbelieved it, by then I was well on my way to accepting the fact that yes, Darwin nailed it. That said I was still in the closet a bit since such views ran counter to my Biblical literalism upbringing. But that along with so much else I've told is a whole separate blog entry. So back to moths...
Since first discovering them I've jumped at the chance to inspect these awesome little fast flying teddy bears every chance I've gotten. We were even fortunate enough to have one come inside the house and visit with us a few years back.
Here's one more suzumega I saw parked on a little Buddha head outside a temple
And since I titled this "moths" I met here are a few more...
First up a jumbo Antheraea Yamamai or Yamamayu-ga or tensan 山繭蛾・ヤママユガ ・天蚕 that I found while peddling up to the Gotemba trail 5th climbing station on Mt. Fuji one summer's night.
Once home from that same trip I found this master of camouflage on my shoes outside the door here in Kannami. This one's been harder to find a match with the googles but I think it might be Psilogramma increta, a cousin of the suzumega above that goes by the name shimofurisuzume シモフリスズメ in Japanese.
シモフリスズメ
Last summer I interrupted these two Sesujisuzume セスジスズメ Theretra oldenlandiae Hawkmoth or Taro Hornworms going at it out by the river near our home here.
Then not long after someone shared a picture of an airplane moth in the States with me I found its cousin here on a convenience store wall one night
And back to climbing Mt. Fuji, this little sparkly dude was spotted way up near the summit
Another day maybe I'll get to snakes and geckos, birds galore or the infamous カブト虫kabuto mushi rhinoceros beetles and クワガタstag beetles and other bugs, or the badger that wandered into our yard one day or... good gosh maybe I'll rename this
伊豆半島自然ブログ
The Izu Peninsula nature blog.
Then again no, my mind's far too fragmented to stick with one topic even as wide-scale and diverse as nature is around here. There are too many other things this American expat on Izu wants to write about, but no doubt there'll be plenty of nature mixed in just the same.
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