Well, actually, this is nature immediately outside my kitchen. It’s finally raining around here these days, and I saw this through my kitchen window the other day:

Hey – I assumed this was a moth, because I think of them as being brown, but I just went and looked up the difference, and learned that it’s a butterfly. You can tell because its antennae are club-shaped, while most moth antennae aren’t. (The picture is a little confusing – of the two long things that appear to be sticking out from its head, only the one on the left is an antenna. The one on the right is a leg. The second antenna is out of focus in the background.)

Also, it’s out during the day and it’s holding its wings together, which aren’t definite indicators, but they usually mean butterfly.

Actually, the whole butterfly-moth thing isn’t very precise, scientifically. Butterflies and moths are all members of the order Lepidoptera. Butterflies are one group of Lepidopterans; skippers are another that are usually lumped as “butterflies” by people like you and me who don’t know any better; the other 20-odd groups of Lepidopterans are what we call “moths.”

So, while saying something is a “butterfly” is reasonably specific, saying something is a “moth” is just lumping together a whole bunch of not-very-closely-related bugs. This helpful FAQ from The Lepidopterists’ Society says “Butterflies can be thought of as being basically a group of moths specialized to fly during the day.” (But some moths are active during the day, too.)

Update, 10/4: Commenter “Ranger Steve” dropped by to tell us that this is a Common Buckeye. Cool! Learn more about the species here.

photo: me