Just about two weeks ago, I arrived back home after a near month-long meander through the western United States. Every time I’ve sat down to write a brief summary of the trip, it quickly becomes a long-winded treatise reflecting my awe of all the geologic processes, biodiversity, and ecosystems I traversed. For the moment, I thought I’d just post a statistical digest of the adventure. I tried to upload a few observations from each day of the trip as they occurred, but uploads of the larger array of observations will necessarily appear over time.

Dates: August 29 to September 25 (28 days)
Miles: 6,500 miles in my vehicle, not including a 3-day chauffeured trip to the Oregon coast with friends.
States: 13

Focal destinations, roughly in chronological order:

Texas: Caprock Canyon SP
Colorado: Pawnee Nat. Grasslands
Wyoming: Grand Tetons Nat. Park
Idaho: Craters of the Moon Nat. Monument
Oregon: Wallowa Mts, Blue Mts, Northern Coast, Mt. Hood, Finley NWR, Malheur NWR
Washington: Mt. Saint Helens
Nevada: Sheldon NWR
California: US 395, Mt. Whitney, Manzanar, Ancient Bristlecone Pines, Owens Valley, Death Valley
Utah: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Capitol Reefs, Natural Bridges, Monument Valley
New Mexico: Very Large Array, Valley of Fires

Some of the above destinations were targeted, others were accidental. All offered special memories.

As might be expected from my pathway, my home was the southernmost and easternmost point on the entire journey (at about 30.42N, -97.76W). My northernmost location was near Morton, WA, just north of Mt. Saint Helens at 46.55N; my westernmost point was at the Boiler Bay State Wayside on the Oregon Coast at -124.07W. I took a few hikes up over 10,000 ft elevation (White Mts and Mount Whitney in California), maxing out probably on the Methuselah Walk among the Bristlecone Pines at about 10,300 ft. I stopped briefly at Badwater in Death Valley (-282 ft below sea level). I car-camped about half of the nights on the road, suffering through mornings as low as 26F (Sheldon NWR, NV). It got to 104F as I was exiting Death Valley on Sep. 21, but I was rarely in temperatures in the 90s anywhere except in Texas. There was some occasional light to moderate rain on the coastal side of the mountains in the Pacific Northwest, but nothing east of the Cascade-Sierra divide; I actually went about 5 or 6 days without seeing a cloud in e. Oregon, Nevada, and eastern California.

Having driven through Reno, Carson City, and Las Vegas, I probably passed within 10 miles of 90% of the entire population of Nevada. By contrast, traveling down US 395 and out through Death Valley in California kept me safely insulated from 98%+ of that state’s 40 million people…excepting tourists like myself. The densest humanity I found myself surrounded by was a 45-minute crawl through downtown Las Vegas on I-15. Parts of north-central Oregon (between the Cascades and Blue Mountains) are exceptionally unpopulated; at times, I’d drive for half an hour on rural Oregon highways without passing another vehicle. A singular goal of this adventure was to avoid freeways and busy highways as much as practical within the limits of my schedule. I measure that I drove about 796 mi of freeways in the entire 6,427-mile journey, or about 12.4% of the total miles; most of that was getting across Wyoming on I-80, through urban portions of Nevada, and in/around Portland, OR.

I got home with something over 4,000 images. For iNat purposes, I photographed a lot of plants (especially dominant trees and shrubs in various habitats), and tried to document just about any critters that presented themselves (except the bull Elk I nearly hit in pre-dawn darkness in New Mexico). With just a few exceptions, butterflies were pretty sparse at higher elevations and more northerly latitudes. I slaughtered untold numbers of butterflies and other insects coming back into Texas as it had been wet September in my absence. I did some blacklighting at 8 locations in 7 states and kept an eye out for moths at many gas stations and corner stores; most of the moths will be new to me and it will take weeks or months to ID them all and upload them. I encountered 9 species of junipers and 10 species of pines, documenting most of them as best I could. The most abundant flowers that I saw were always rabbitbrush, blooming along roadsides everywhere in the Great Basin and Pacific Northwest. I took the time to document the shrub now and then, only to find out later that there are probably 45 species of “rabbitbrush” (Chrysothamnus and Ericameria) in the western U.S. and I passed through the ranges of perhaps 30 of these. Maybe I’ve got good enough documentation to put a species name on a couple of them. Sigh…

The full array of observations from this trip can be examined in this batch which encompasses the inclusive dates from Aug. 29 to Setp. 25, 2018.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2018-08-29&d2=2018-09-25&order=asc&order_by=observed_on&place_id=any&subview=table&user_id=gcwarbler&verifiable=any
or from this TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/y2r6vch6
This batch will of course be augmented over a period of months as I upload additional observations. (As of October 2019, the uploads were only complete for the above trip through about Sept. 1, 2018.)

On August 15, I began uploading several images from Upper Trabuco Canyon in Orange County, CA. This task had long been on my “Do List”, just waiting for a good slide scanner which only recently arrived. Trabuco Canyon had been a favorite hiking destination of mine since childhood. In April-June 1974, as I was finishing my undergrad degree at U.C. Irvine, I visited Upper Trabuco Canyon several times, discovering many interesting plants, butterflies, and birds,
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=1974-04-01&d2=1974-06-13&place_id=2738&subview=grid&user_id=gcwarbler&verifiable=any
culminating in the documentation of nesting Spotted Owls on literally my last days in California before moving to Texas.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15516399
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15516397
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15529230

Fast forward to present day. I had heard in the news about the “Holy Fire” (which started at the mouth of Holy Jim Canyon, a tributary to Trabuco), but assumed it was confined to its namesake canyon. Now I find that on August 6, the first day of that fire and barely a week before I started my uploads, the Holy Fire actually burned through all of Upper Trabuco Canyon, precisely the area where my images from 44 years ago were obtained. I haven’t heard of a habitat damage assessment yet, but I fear for the health (and existence) of the groves of old-growth Bigcone Douglas-Fir that were a key feature on some of the higher slopes in that area.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15470764
I’ll be eager to hear more after they get that fire finally under control.

The fire was set by an arsonist; he has been arrested. I certainly understand (better than most observers) that fire is a natural part of Southern California ecosystems, but this was anything but “natural”. That person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but if convicted, I can think of no punishment that would be too severe, given the long-term ecological devastation he may have perpetrated. Time will tell. It won’t heal my soul.

Chuck

I recently acquired a nice slide scanner (Nikon CoolScan V) and have gotten busy organizing my thousands of old 35 mm slides to begin the arduous task of digitizing them. But to what end? For purposes of iNaturalist, is there any value in confirming that, in fact, a Northern Cardinal occurred in west Texas in May 1970,
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15338619
or that a Stellar’s Jay visited my campsite in the Sierra Nevada in the summer of 1971,
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14483654
or that a common species like Long-billed Curlew was present at a well-known migratory stopover site like Upper Newport Bay that Fall,
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15377821
???

Frankly, with the equipment I had at the time (Minolta SRT-101 with 135mm telephoto) and my inexperience at photography, these are pretty crappy images of unsurprising subjects. Unless I get voted down, I will continue to scan and upload more natural history images from the past 40+ years of my outdoor life. Trust me, the images do get better in subsequent years, but I have to ask: Are these isolated old records of any value to any type of biological/ecological question?

Perhaps a few flowering dates or flight dates of butterflies will be of interest from an historical standpoint. I will have some uncommon and rare stuff to upload—for example, watch soon for some images of Blackpoll and Blackburnian Warbler that showed up in my yard in Southern California in the early 1970s. Those records, particularly the bird records, will have some value for documentation even though they have already been accepted and published in journals like American Birds, etc.

I don’t expect there will ever be masses of film and slide images uploaded from the pre-digital era. There certainly has been some accumulation of such efforts (e.g. from my pals @greglasley and @upupamartin, among others) but I have to wonder out loud if this is nothing more than a vanity exercise to put up earlier and earlier observations for the iNat database.

I face a long task ahead to do all this slide scanning (not to mention getting all my family photos digitized!) so I’ll work on this chore now and then as I’m inspired to do so and can find time inbetween real-time, present-day observations. Don’t be surprised to see me jumping around with observations from 2018 interspersed with blurry images from decades past.

And rest assured, my equipment and my skill level does improve (slightly) over time.

Enjoy!

It is axiomatic that iNaturalist observations haven’t blanketed the globe yet, although certain areas are well-covered. In Texas, it is evident that observers and their observations are concentrated around the many urban centers and the array of parks, preserves, and refuges scattered across the state. Where there are not substantial urban centers and few/no public lands, there are often large gaps in our coverage. This includes large swaths of the High Plains and Panhandle along with the wide open spaces in the Trans-Pecos. This is also the case even where there is public road access. Some long stretches of road just don’t get the attention they deserve.

Such is the case for Hudspeth County, sandwiched between El Paso and the popular destinations of Big Bend and the Guadalupe Mountains. For example, in all of this county, there are a total of just 234 observations of 134 species of flowering plants to date.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=931&subview=grid&taxon_id=47125
This compares to efforts in such areas as Travis (40,000 observations of 1,766 spp), Harris (36,000 observations of 2,000 spp), and Dallas Counties (22,000 observations of 1,216 spp). Most of the Hudspeth observations are concentrated along/near destinations on I-10 in the south (including the Indio Ranch Research Station*) and US 62/180 in the north of the county.
* https://www.utep.edu/indio/

Having noticed this big “doughnut hole” in observations as I prepared for my westward journey in early April, I made up my mind to add at least a few observations in the vast empty spaces of Hudspeth County. So on the morning of April 9, departing from the Davis Mountains, I chose to drive north on FM 1111 from Sierra Blanca, TX, to its junction with US 62/180. I accomplished an ad hoc roadside transect in the mid-section of this road, in mid-county, extending from—get your county map book out—Gunsight Road to Frederick Road. This 4.4-mi stretch of FM 1111 makes a beeline due north across arid desert flats with a few shallow desert washes—not a vacation destination by any means. Here are two images of habitats along the transect:

As can be seen in the images above, traffic on the road on that Monday morning was almost non-existent, so I drove slowly along and stopped at various spots to document plant diversity and look for any other available critters. The region was still in an extreme drought so flowering plants were hard to come by, but I made a point of documenting all the dominant woody species and succulents and photographed a small selection of hardy Spring wildflowers along the roadsides.

I spent just over one hour along that transect and documented a total of about 26 species of plants and 3 insects. The area will never be considered a hotspot of biological diversity, but now at least there will be a few dots on iNat in the middle of Hudspeth County. My uploads will follow this journal article shortly.

During an iNat bioblitz in the Del Rio/Amistad area of Texas in early April 2018, we had the opportunity to document “Bandana Daisy” (Gaillardia coahuilensis), a very locally occurring relative of the common and widespread Indian Blankets (Gaillardia pulchella). Bandana Daisy was first described by Dr. Billy Turner in 1977* from specimens in that area, along with material from adjacent Mexico.

Typical examples of these two species can be seen here:
Bandana Daisy: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12577376
Indian Blankets: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12936811

Bandana Daisy is superficially quite similar to Indian Blanket, but can be readily separated by looking for the following characters:

Ray flowers: Although quite variable, the ray flowers of Bandana Daisy are usually divided deeper than those of Indian Blankets. Typically they are cut about 40-50% of the way to the base while those of Indian Blanket are rarely incised more than about 30%. Also, there is a tendency for the ray flowers of Bandana Daisy to have more yellow on them, occupying as much as 50% of the ray flower. Some populations can have completely yellow rays. This character is also variable in Indian Blanket but typically they are 60 to 90% red.

Disk flowers: This can be one of the easiest characters to observe. The disk flowers of Bandana Daisy have very short fuzzy hairs, while those of Indian Blanket are clothed with long tangled hairs which makes each little disk flower look like a starfish or medusa-head. The overall effect is of a relatively smooth disk for Bandana versus a frizzy disk for Indian Blanket.

Phyllaries: On Bandana Daisy, these are covered with very short curled hairs; there are no long marginal hairs. On Indian Blankets, the phyllaries are copiously covered with long spreading hairs including on the tops, margins, and base. Some of those hairs are nearly as long as the width of the phyllary. Sometimes the tips of the phyllaries--which show through in a top view of the flower--lack the long hairs, so be sure to look at the flower from a side view or the underside to examine all of the phyllaries.

Good close-up images with top and lateral views of the flowers of each species will easily show these distinct characters.

Range: http://bonap.net/MapGallery/County/Gaillardia%20coahuilensis.png
Bandana Daisy basically replaces Indian Blankets in the counties around the "hump" of the Rio Grande, centered on Val Verde and Terrell counties. It is mapped well up into Crockett County, along with Kinney County to the east. There are a few records in the s.w. corner of Edwards County, in western Uvalde County, and in northern Maverick County (Turner et al. 2003). It co-occurs with Perfumeballs (Gaillardia suavis) over this entire range.

• Turner, B. L. 1977. A New Species of Gaillardia (Asteraceae-Heliantheae) from Northcentral Mexico and Adjacent Texas. Southwestern Naturalist 21(4):539-541. (Available for download from JSTOR.)

Turner, B. L., H. Nichols, G. Denny, O. Doron. 2003. Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Texas. Sida 24. Botanical Res. Inst. Texas.

Some recent sightings* of Acronicta moths have prompted me to try to dig into the original descriptions of certain species to look for distinctions. The three species are:

9222 - Acronicta paupercula Grote 1874

https://bugguide.net/node/view/557337

9223 - Acronicta lepetita Smith 1908

https://bugguide.net/node/view/391023

9225 - Acronicta vinnula (Grote 1864)

https://bugguide.net/node/view/45332

• Some of the recent observations which need attention include (but are not limited to):
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12850205
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12735869
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12412055
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12000551
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/11851544

The original description of paupercula by Grote in 1874 is of little help because it only compares that species to A. exilis, a very different looking species of the E. US.
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/17720#page/225/mode/1up
I can't find Smith's original (1908) description of lepetita. The only description of these three similar species that I can find online is in Seitz' 1919 massive work: Macrolepidoptera of the World, Part 2 American Macrolepidoptera, Div. 7 Owlet Moths, p. 21. It's in German and my German is all but non-existent. The volume can be viewed online starting with the following title page, or downloaded from the Biodiversity Heritage Library from this page:
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/39808#page/7/mode/1up

Below I'm pasting in the text from page 21 regarding the three species and hoping someone with German proficiency can help translate it. (Seitz illustrates the three species on his plate 3 but the hand-paintings are pretty simplified and the titles and legend are illegible on the online version from the Smithsonian, so they are of no help.) So below is the text from Seitz, 1919, p. 21. This was OCR-ed and I've tried to read through it for typos, but there may still be some spelling errors. The term "Hflgl" is apparently an abbreviation, but I can't find the full word:

A. vinnula Grt. (3 c). Eine kleine weißliche, etwas olive getönte Art, die mit keiner anderen zu verwechseln ist. Der schwarze Verbindungsstrich zwischen den Querlinien fehlt, letztere mehr oder weniger olivgrün; der schwarze Wurzelstrich entsendet in der Mitte einen Haken zum Ird. Hflgl weißlich, braun bestäubt. Canada, Vereinigte Staaten bis Texas. Die grüne Raupe trägt auf jeder Warze ein steifes Haar, das von kürzeren kreuzförmig umstellt ist. Sie lebt an Ulme.

A. paupercula Ort. (3 c) ist der vorigen etwas ähnlich, hat aber mehr bräunliche oder besser schmutzig rötlichgelbe Bestäubung auf dem granweißen Grund, die Zeichnung ist sonst ähnlich, die vordere Querlinie und besonders der Mittelschatten sind aber viel undeutlicher. Texas.

A. lepetita Sm. (3d) ist ebenfalls der vinnula ähnlich, kleiner, die Grundfarbe ist blaugrau, olivenbraun gemischt besonders vor dem Saum, Wellenlinie ganz undeutlich. Hflgl dunkler. Aus Texas beschrieben.

If you can translate German, please add a comment here or send me a personal message. Or if you know of someone who might help with this please direct them to this journal post.

Danke!

I just rolled into Austin last night at the end of my 4000+ mile road trip out to Death Valley and back—which started with the Del Rio/Amistad/Devil’s River BioBlitz on April 5-8. My subsequent travels took me to the following locations, in all of which I “found some Nature” (as @sambiology says):

Balmorhea SP, TX

• Davis Mts SP, TX
• Franklins Mts SP, El Paso, TX

• Gila Nat. For., NM
  Petrified Forest NP, AZ
  Las Vegas (“What happens in…”)
  Lake Mead Nat. Rec. Area (Wetlands Trail, NV)
  Death Valley, CA (4 days)

• Lake Mead Nat. Rec. Area (Katherine Landing, AZ)
  Meteor Crater, AZ
  Winslow, AZ (stood on a corner…)
  Roosevelt L., AZ
  Tonto Nat. Mon., AZ

• Gila Box Riparian Nat. Cons. Area, AZ
  White Sands Nat. Mon., NM
  Sacramento Mts, NM

• Monahans Sandhills SP, TX

I put up a moth sheet with varying success at each location marked with an asterisk (*). Results were very good at Davis Mts SP and moderately good at other locations except in the Franklins Mts where it turned windy and cool that particular night. The vast majority of moths at every location were new to me! I also photographed a few birds here and there including such things as Zone-tailed Hawk, Phainopepla, Townsend’s Warbler, and Red-faced Warbler, along with the occasional urban bird. And plants, plants, plants: I tried to document the dominant plant species and any flowering plants at each of my major destinations. That was pretty easy in Death Valley where the rocks, sand, and salt have the upper hand. As well, much of AZ and NM that I crossed through is currently in extreme to exceptional drought, so flowering plants were few and far between except at a few notable locations.

The many experiences and adventures on this trip were as diverse as the landscape. I experienced temps from 34F to 96F; I car-camped in temps from 85F down to 38F. I had some calm days, but also survived a sand/gravel storm in Death Valley (including broken windows on [other peoples] cars) and a wind storm at Meteor Crater where they clocked a gust of 110 mph while I was in the visitor's center. Varying skies throughout the trip with lots of sun, but including a very few snow flakes on the Mogollon Plateau in AZ, yet NOT A DROP of rain the entire time.

I don’t know if this is typical of my previous road trips, but on this particular journey, given the amazing cross-section of North American habitats, floras, and faunas that I experienced, I came home with about 1 photo per mile for the trip, i.e. about 4300 images for a 4200 mile trip. I’ll have them up on iNat by noon today….(and if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Arizona that I’ll sell you).

In truth, it will take me weeks and weeks to edit and upload my haul of images. My priority will obviously be to start with the Del Rio BioBlitz ASAP, and then probably work my way chronologically through the trip. I’ll probably upload my moderate number of bird images first, then moths and insects, then plants. Oh, and the CNC starts this Friday!!! Geez….no rest for the weary.

My apologies to my fellow iNatters if I have been—and continue to be—a bit slow in responding to tags, requests for info, or just snide remarks. I’ll get to them all as time allows. PLEASE continue to tag me if you have comments or questions.

Exhausted in Austin…

gcwarbler

During my tenure at Balcones Canyonlands NWR when I was just starting to (re)learn moths, I spent countless evenings studying critters at a porchlight at the cabin where I stayed for field work. I had no macro lens for my 35mm camera at the time and this was five years before I would start using digital photography. I would collect single examples of each moth, sketch them in my field journal and try to identify them with the available resources of the time such as Hollard’s “Moth Book” and Covell’s Peterson Field Guide. (This predates MPG, BG, iNat, etc.) Today I’m beginning a series of uploads of pages from my field journals of that time period. Some of the notes and sketches are accompanied by specimens (moth wings) taped into the journal. I have reviewed all of my sketches and identifications and updated/upgraded them to the extent that I can at this point, some 16+ years later.

Looking back at the set of sketches and notes--some of which went unidentified at the time--I have actually been able to add a few new species to the Refuge moth list, such as Charadra dispulsa (Noctuidae), Schinia alencis (Noctuidae), and Zale calycanthata (Erebidae). Better late than never!

Historical footnote: Not by coincidence, I started my renewed study of moths during some intense field work and self re-examination right after 9/11, i.e. in mid-September 2001. That was a traumatic time for all of us. Diving into something to keep my mind off of current events of the time was my method of coping.

I don’t normally upload images in the middle of the night and I’m certainly not in the habit of journaling at this hour either. However, this is a special occasion.

Although I have spent many happy, sleepy hours mothing in various localities, I wasn’t prepared for this. Tonight is my first night of mothing while on vacation near Boquete, Chiriquí, Panama. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew virtually everything I encountered would be new to me and I hoped to see a few jazzy tropical moths or other insects.

We had arrived in Panama on the afternoon of December 11 and it had rained almost continually through that night and through the 12th of December. Wednesday the 13th dawned partly cloudy and windy. Over the course of the day, it was mostly sunny with some heavy misty clouds just spilling over the mountains to the north before they dissipated—a beautiful day all-in-all. The wind unexpectedly picked up as the sun went down about 6 p.m. just as I got busy trying to set up a mothing station. The only convenient segment of an outer wall, e.g. near an outside outlet for my small UV light, was barely 4 ft wide, so I had to fold my white moth sheet in half and use most of a roll of masking tape to get it secured against the wall, all in 25 knot winds. Nonetheless, a few small moths were already showing up by 7 p.m. as dark descended so I knew I’d at least have something to photograph.

Thereafter, I spent the next 4 hrs until about 11 p.m. documenting 25 to 30 interesting and diverse species of moths and a handful of other insects. I went to bed to get a little sleep with the intention of arising every few hours to recheck the sheet. Barely an hour later, my wife nudged me and said, “You’ve got to wake up and come out to the moth sheet!” She wouldn’t tell me what awaited. She was smiling broadly, which in itself was quite unexpected because she had spent the latter half of the day suffering through a mild case of "mal estomago".

I was pretty groggy so she walked me out to the moth sheet and, without pointing, prompted me, “What do you see?” I had focused on the ground level of the sheet and there certainly were a few more new, interesting, medium-sized moths that had shown up. “Look higher!” That’s when the scene became surreal.

I saw what she saw; it took my breath away.

I’m not even going to tell you what we encountered. You’ll have to see the corresponding upload to iNat. Suffice it to say, if I never photograph another moth the rest of our 3 weeks of vacation, it will all have been worth it. If I don’t see a Quetzal or even lay eyes on a single iota of cloud forest, it will all have been worth it; one iNat observation that will have made this entire Panamanian adventure worthwhile, no matter what else happens. And we’ve only been here a couple of days.

Enjoy!

Chuck

* I hope you’ll forgive me for “shouting” with all caps in the header for this journal entry. You’ll understand why.

p.s. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9152365

I continue to review all available imagery of Cisthene lichen moths as I try to whip this ID guide into shape for publication in a formal journal. I found one "new" field mark that seems to help separate two Cisthene which overlap in Central and South Texas: Thin-banded and Tamaulipan:
Along with the field marks noted previously (see Key), I notice that leg color seems to be diagnostic in Tamaulipan Lichen Moth:

The hind legs of Tamaulipan Lichen Moth (C. subrufa) are typically all pale yellow with just a touch of gray on the distal few tarsi. More importantly, the tibia of the middle legs often have yellow on them, either mostly yellow or characteristically with the middle 1/3 of the mid-tibia pale yellow and gray on each end. Some examples of this distinctive leg color pattern can be seen in these images:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8244602
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5200306
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4252936
In fact, this banding on the middle legs of Tamaulipan Lichen Moth is much more similar to that on One-banded Lichen Moth. See for example:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6038657
(Notice however that in One-banded, the basal orange streak is always connected to the PM band.)

The hind legs of Thin-banded Lichen Moth are variable, occasionally showing some yellow on the femor, tibia, or tarsi but only rarely seeming to be completely yellow like Tamaulipan. Importantly, yellow on the middle legs is confined to the base of the femur. I can find NO example of Thin-banded with any amount of pale yellow on the mid-tibia. Typical leg color in Thin-banded of Texas can be seen on these iNat and BG images:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7272109
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8064611
http://bugguide.net/node/view/361632
http://bugguide.net/node/view/1136108

Time--and more examples--will tell if this new leg color distinction holds up in larger samples. Thus far, it has helped re-identify at least a few Tamaulipan Lichen Moths outside of the LRGV of Texas such as:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8394140
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8394221
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8244602
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8095629