Moth trap prototype. Modifications coming soon,
My first recollection of encountering the mysterious side of moths came one night long ago, when my mother and I discovered a Luna moth fluttering around the light on our back porch. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it and we had no idea what it was. No such thing as Google, of course – it was in the mid-1950s – so we had to wait until she could get to the small library in the nearby county seat to get an ID.
We lived in hill-country of northern Arkansas at the time and were always seeing new things in nature; but rarely did we ever see anything more exciting and strange than that moth. What a fabulous and mysterious creature.
My roots in Natural History can be traced back to many childhood encounters with the natural wonders of an Arkansas Red Oak forest, including that marvelous Luna moth. They left me with an appreciation for the natural world that sustains me even now, when my mobility and range of motion are severely limited. Every now and then, however, I get wind of a great activity or two that is within my range of capabilities. “Mothing” is one of those.
The inspiration for this new activity comes from an Instagram site, @clouded.silver, which is the project of a fascinating person living on “a tiny Scottish island.” The site features information on everything from moths to oysters It also provides a wide range of DIY information ranging from how to harvest and prepare “Gut Weed” salads to making your own low-budget moth trap. It was her series of moth photos and her trap information that has led me to try my hand at it.
The trap design is rather simple, all in all, and easy to make. It's also inexpensive to put together – I made mine for under $60, and a little more time spent shopping could easily have lowered that initial investment. A potentially expensive add-on turns out to be the purchase of a good visual resource that will help with the identification process. The best for this region of the country I’ve been able to track down so far appears to be Moths of Western North America, and it runs about $80 at Abe Books.
I think I’ll wait until I have actually trapped a few moths to identify before I’ll take the plunge. Meanwhile I have a couple old handbooks on lepidoptery that may see me through. Here's my first night's take. (The books tell you setting a trap during a full moon is likely to yield less than a bucket full.) I'll try again later in July, when the moon is closer to New.