University of Alberta Museums Search

A medium-size moth (approx. 3.5 cm wingspan), light and dark grey and black, lacking any of the brown color of most Alberta Apamea. Forewings mottled grey with a prominent black basal dash and thick longitudinal median bar. Hindwings dirty white with a faint dark discal mark and with the outer third clouded with dark grey. There are few other larger black or dark grey moths that fly in the spring in Alberta.

Spalding's Quaker is one of the least commonly collected Alberta Quaker's. Here at least it is a moth of the dry prairie grasslands region, absent from the cooler parklands and foothills. The earlier collectors apparently missed Spalding's Quaker; the first specimens were collected in and near Olds in 1998 by Ernest Mengersen and his students. Since then we have picked up the occasional specimen along the lower Red Deer River and Milk River valley.