1,000-Knock Challenge to Overcome Insect Phobia: No. 258, Helicoverpa armigera (Old World Bollworm)

I'm glad I left the house with a little extra time for my work starting in the early afternoon.

There was a moth at the insect-watching spot in front of the station. Honestly, I thought it was dead, but I took a picture first.

The lens I have on my E-P7 is the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 30mm F3.5 Macro, continuing from yesterday.

This is the perfect combination for photographing this moth.

After this, I switched the lens to the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 25mm F1.8 to take a picture for the header image, and then poked it to see if it was a corpse. It moved.

And then, it flew away.

Just as I thought, 'Oh well,' it landed on the right sleeve of my suit. Even though it's late September, I usually commute in short sleeves, but today I was wearing a jacket because I planned to hang out at a family restaurant after work.

I tried to take a picture with just my left hand, but I ended up producing a bunch of failed shots (though I didn't actually click the shutter that many times).

I switched the lens back to the 30mm macro, but it didn't make much of a difference.

While I was doing that, it flew again, and this time it landed on my Uniqlo folding umbrella, which doubles as a parasol. I had been walking with this parasol open, but since it was in the way of taking pictures, I had folded it up and placed it on the ground near where the moth was at first.

I lifted part of the umbrella with my left hand to take a picture as it crawled into the gap in the umbrella.

When it gets bright, it gets restless and starts moving, so that was surprisingly difficult to photograph as well.

I thought it flew again, but this time it landed on my left hand. It kept moving around, though.

So its eyes (compound eyes) are green.

It flew again and landed on my suit once more.

I finally took off my jacket to take the picture.

This was also a one-handed shot. Thanks to the lightness of the E-P7 and the lens I'm using, it's easy to shoot. Lightness and compactness are justice and a weapon in themselves.

After this last shot, it flew away again. This time it landed a little bit ahead of my feet, but I really had to catch my train. I gave up, thinking time was up. Actually, I had a little more time, but I hadn't checked the train schedule properly.

I looked it up after I got home.

It didn't have any major distinguishing features and was on the small-to-medium side, so I thought it would be tough to look up from scratch, so I sought the help of Google Lens again.

Various things are coming up, but... wait, when I tried again, the Oriental tobacco budworm didn't appear as a candidate... The Oriental tobacco budworm belongs to the Heliothinae subfamily, but what appeared today are various species from the Hadeninae subfamily.

I'll check them one by one, but they seem a bit different.

I'll list it as an Oriental tobacco budworm for now. Judging by the coloring, I think it's a male. It's difficult because there is a lot of individual variation in the patterns on the forewings of the Oriental tobacco budworm.

If I'm wrong, I'll correct it later.

I often see Oriental tobacco budworm larvae eating flower petals. The following is when I first learned that.

I took that 21 years ago!

And after that, was it finally the first time I saw the adult? That's the following.

I thought it was relatively recent, but it was 19 years ago!

Because the impression from that time remains, I had an image that the Oriental tobacco budworm had more vertically elongated forewings than the one I took this time, so I wondered if it was really an Oriental tobacco budworm, but looking at the one I took again, it is quite vertically elongated...

Impressions based on memory are truly unreliable.

You can find the list of insects for the 1000-Knock Drill to Overcome Insect Phobia from the link below.

[Children's Insect Specialty School] - 1000-Knock Drill to Overcome Insect Phobia