Awhile back I wrote a post about a walking stick that I found in my bathroom. The other night I found another interesting insect in my bathroom. It was a fairly plain looking brown moth with one major exception. It had a long hook like “nose” that curled up over the top of its head. I had never seen anything quite like it. Actually, at first I thought it was something that was stuck to it, but when I got out my macro lens (it makes a great magnifying glass to look at things with as well as taking magnified photos) it became obvious that it was part of the moth. Obviously, I already had the camera out and my curiosity was piqued, so it was time for a photo shoot. The little moth didn’t seem to mind at all, so I took quite a few (don’t worry, I won’t make you look at them all!).

After taking the pictures, I really wanted to find out what kind of moth this was. I put some of the pictures into my PictureInsect app, but without much luck. There are just too many small brown moths, and none of my photos that showed the whole moth got a good look at that nose. When I tried a couple of the macro images, the app didn’t know what to do with them! So instead, I went to good old google and found a site for identification of moths that are found in Florida. On that site, it was easy to identify my little subject as an ambiguous moth. At first I thought that maybe even the site didn’t know what it was, but with a bit more research I realized that it really is called an ambiguous moth. The reason for that is that it comes in several colors (brown, grey, and blue) and varying shades of those colors and they don’t always have consistent markings.

Ambiguous moths have a pretty extensive range from northern Canada down into Mexico, and as far west as Texas. They are a litter moth (their caterpillars tend to live in and feed on dead leaf litter). They normally aren’t seen flying around until late spring or early summer, so I’m not really sure what this one was even doing out and about let alone hanging out in my bathroom. I also discovered that the “nose” is actually palps, which are one of the mouthparts of the moth. Only the males are able to push them out like that, so I guess my little visitor was a male.

After our photo session, I took the little ambiguous moth outside and it climbed off of my hand into a small shrub. It seemed quite content there, because it was still there when I went out later to put the dogs up. By morning it was gone. I hope it was able to find a female ambiguous moth that was also out and about early in the year. One of the things about country living is that unexpected animals sometimes end up in the house. Who knows what I’ll find in my bathroom next!