Small white moth ID?

Just shook a bunch of these off a blackberry plant (then realized I didn't get a picture!)  
Very small, maybe 1/4 inch long. It's facing left in this picture.
Hoping someone can ID them and tell me whether I'll regret not slaughtering them now :D
I regretted saying "oh that's pretty!" to harlequin beetles, hoping to not make that same mistake again.

Could it be "white fly"? I think they concern with white fly is that they spread mold. I recall having them on my raspberries late in the season one year, but I haven't seen any this year.

We have had non-stop rain. Mold is doing jsut fine on it's own. And I think anything going from plant to plant could spread mold spores?

I'm still outside working, I put a random Pantry Moth trap on the blackberry. Can't hurt, might help. I stampeded one into it so it got stuck to encourage others. Maybe small white moths have a kink for pantry moths and will go to their pheromones :D
And maybe the moth traps were right by my desk...   :D   There IS always that to factor in

It might be a cabbage moth.  If so, they are not friends if you want to grow any brassicas!

Aimee Bacon wrote:It might be a cabbage moth.  If so, they are not friends if you want to grow any brassicas!

Way too small for cabbage moths. Got lots of them. And gave up on brassicas, due to them.  

Pearl Sutton wrote:Way too small for cabbage moths. Got lots of them. And gave up on brassicas, due to them.  

You don't have a surplus of cabbage moths, you've got a deficit of the right kind of wasps - the friendly ones that *adore* hunting little green cabbage larvae!

1/4” is too big for whitefly.

there are moths that are pests to blackberries, but those are too small to be blackberry looper moths….

are you sure they’re moths, as opposed to a planthopper of some sort? like, did you actually come in contact with them and get scale fluff on you?

greg mosser wrote:1/4” is too big for whitefly.

there are moths that are pests to blackberries, but those are too small to be blackberry looper moths….

I don't know if they are pest or were just sunning themselves dry after the heavy dew fall.

are you sure they’re moths, as opposed to a planthopper of some sort? like, did you actually come in contact with them and get scale fluff on you?

I did not poke them. I could do so. I said moth because they fluttered away like moths. Look like a moth when parked (like in the pic.)
I'll poke them and see what happens. Scale fluff is the stuf that comes off their wings, right?

Jay Angler wrote:

Pearl Sutton wrote:Way too small for cabbage moths. Got lots of them. And gave up on brassicas, due to them.  

You don't have a surplus of cabbage moths, you've got a deficit of the right kind of wasps - the friendly ones that *adore* hunting little green cabbage larvae!

This is absolutely true. I made nesting places for friendly wasps. They did great one year. The next year unfriendly red wasps showed up too, threw out the good ones, and made the garden dangerous to me, I don't tend to dodge wasps, as they are friendly, right? That's the kind I've been around all my life. Paper and mud wasps.

The good wasps say "Hey! You are in my face, you annoy me and I will sting you!" Red wasps say "You are in my face, I sting you and if you don't run fast enough, everybody will sting you." No warning at all. And oooh do their stings hurt.

So I'm skipping brassicas this year, and not encouraging the red wasps to hang around.

if you can get a clear pic of the hind end, antennas and legs i can have my daughter (entomologist who works in a research lab identifying bugs) look at it.

[this is what she says every time i ask her about a bug- apparently 90% of the differentiating factors you use to identify a species are from the antenna and leg joint ratios, the remainder generally their private parts]

Ok, I tried to pet one, see what they were made of.

I couldn't touch it. They moved away, then if they had to they POP! jumped away and looks like a moth as it leaves. Was weird.  I can't poke one. Still saying they are 1/4 inch or a bit less, they POP in the air to launch off the plant, and they look like a tiny white (maybe blueish or grayish?) moth when they are flying. And they move around to the other side of the branch if you poke at them.

And, incidentally, I could only find two on the plant, but it did rain heavily. Not sure why there was 100+ on it this morning. It was nice and sunny when most things were not yet.

Odd critters.

I did a little poking around and it seems like in your area people have talked about periodic cycles of sod moths (or sod web moths) that are about that size and move/fly strangely and irregularly, i'm not sure about what the head and end of the wings look like in comparison though.

popping into the air sounds planthopper.

did a little more digging, i think this is your guy: citrus flatid planthopper

this page:
https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/citrus-flatid-planthopper

talks about how they’re actually blue/gray but have a white waxy covering that makes them look white. check out this pic- dark spots in the same places as yours and all.

Tereza Okava wrote:I did a little poking around and it seems like in your area people have talked about periodic cycles of sod moths (or sod web moths) that are about that size and move/fly strangely and irregularly, i'm not sure about what the head and end of the wings look like in comparison though.

Just looked them up, got those, but no, they are in the grass, not up on plants, and nope, I know them critters (didn't have a name for them)

greg mosser wrote:popping into the air sounds planthopper.

did a little more digging, i think this is your guy: citrus flatid planthopper

this page:
https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/citrus-flatid-planthopper

talks about how they’re actually blue/gray but have a white waxy covering that makes them look white. check out this pic- dark spots in the same places as yours and all.

THAT WINS!
If it's not that exact one (I'm still reading stuff) it's that one's brother.
And I went out earlier to look again, and came to here to say "there's some kind of white webby stuff in a couple of areas" which fits the planthoppers.

Ok. Now I'm at "Who eats them or what do I need to do?"  

THANK YOU GREG!!

Heh, from an article about them also known as "frosted moth-bug"
Told ya it looks like a moth!  It's not just me!  :D

for what it’s worth, that nc state website says they rarely do enough damage to anything to be worth bothering about.

that’s a paraphrase, if you couldn’t tell.