Good match for https://www.africanmoths.com/pages/HIMANTOPERIDAE/Semioptila%20fulveolans.html , and certainly closer to Mabille’s Himantopterus fulveolans description than to either Hampson’s flavidisca or Butler’s torta which are, to my knowledge, the only Semioptila heretofore known from Zambia.

A solo visit for butterflies; I did not visit any other part of the WEA. The weather at the start was sunny and 85 degrees ("feels like" 94), with a light breeze. I first counted the butterflies feeding on the abundant Bristle Thistle blooms:

280 swallowtails
57 Cloudless Sulphurs
"27" skippers (a known underestimate , as I was focusing on the swallowtails and sulphurs, which were detectable at a distance)
1 Gulf Fritillary
1 White Peacock
1 Common Buckeye

Plus, several Flat-headed Baldcypress Sapwood Beetles

Plus one Larger Florida Mantis (a medium-sized one that ignored swallowtails that in one case, seemed to brush it as it moved from one side of the bloom to the other; the mantis must have been seeking smaller prey such as bees or skippers)

Then I started taking photographs, trying to avoid duplication of individual butterflies as much as possible. I am submitting the following records:

50 skippers
36 swallowtails
21 sulphurs
3 crescents
2 bees
2 Flat-headed Baldcypress Sapwood Beetles
1 moth
and a few others

I left at 1156 -- after 62 minutes at the pond, which is partially flooded! -- and headed home.

The skipper landed atop the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail for maybe one second before the swallowtail shrugged it off. Fortunately, my camera was on and focused.

You know you’ve found a large moth when…

1. After a 40 year career as a wildlife biologist, you can’t believe what you’re seeing is real.
2. Your ruler isn’t long enough to get a good measurement (2nd image), so you go back to get a longer ruler (3rd image) and that isn’t long enough, so you scramble around to find a carpenter’s measuring tape to fully span the wings (4th image).
3. Your astonishment is like the joy of a child on Christmas morning; you start laughing and giggling uncontrollably.
4. The largest moth on your sheet has a wingspan 40X the size of the smallest one.
5. You stay up until 3:30 a.m. journaling about one moth.
6. You start taking selfies...with a moth (last image).

To the best of my ability to measure this critter, the wingspan (with a bit of the tip of the right FW missing) is about 27.8 cm, so it would probably be about 28.5 cm (11.2 in) if it were intact. The species is said to have the largest wingspan of any Lepidopteran in the world.

The moth was initially discovered on the sheet by Mary Kay Sexton. I had overlooked it.

To read more of the story, see:
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/gcwarbler/13211-mothing-in-panama

[See also: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/218581553]

Poor photo, but posting anyway as this wolf was sited only a few days after wolf reintroduction to Colorado, per news reports, and not in this county. Wolf was 200 yards from road, and within site of a herd of mule deer. Looked healthy, immediately perked ears and ran in opposite direction when it saw us.

Blue form of White-lipped Island Pitviper, from Komodo Islands
www.matthieu-berroneau.fr

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Mobbing an Osprey.
Disney’s Pop Century Resort; Orange County, Florida

• Partly sunny, with a high near 89. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 2pm.
• Sunrise 6:30 am; Sunset 8:27 pm
• Daylight Hours: 13 hours, 56 minutes (-17s)

Mama cheeta with 6 cubs! This cheeta mom must be the most patient and caring parent ever - cubs were playing around her head and suckling all the time when we were watching but she never once showed any annoyance. Truely amazing.