moths – Page 3

More on moths

Straight-lined Plagodis, Plagodis phlogosaria

I’ve been doing a lot of mothing lately. I’ve been delighted that this year I’m in a spot where I can put out my lights in my backyard on any given night, whenever the weather’s good, and not have to either travel to another site, or wait until I’m visiting my parents, as I did last spring. It’s been incredibly convenient, and I’ve been taking advantage of it. Among other things, it’s allowed me to slowly learn each new species as it appears, rather than being gone for a week or two and then being faced with a few dozen new species when I next put the sheet out, a little overwhelming.

I’ve been putting most of my moth-related posts up over at NAMBI, since I have no shortage of things to talk about here anyway. I’ll post links here from time to time as a reminder, but if you’d like to keep up on what’s happening on the moth front, head over there to read more. Today’s post: how to keep from going crazy as you try to learn the hundreds of species of moth that fly in your backyard. And yes, it IS possible to learn them all!

Spring in the air

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. So warm that when I took Raven for her walk, I didn’t need my toque – note the bare ears in the photo! And bare hands – no mittens! And unzipped jacket. It was lovely. The day had started out overcast, but by the afternoon the sky had cleared and the sun shone brightly. There was a light breeze, but rather than nipping at your exposed skin like winter breezes usually do, this one caressed your face with soft, warm breaths of air. Oh, it was gorgeous. The sort of day where you just want to close your eyes and soak it in. I took Raven up the road to the abandoned property, where there were a couple of very old wooden chairs tucked at the edge of a clearing in the woods, where I could sit and do just that. The photo just can’t capture how beautiful the day was.

Today was lovely, too. Not quite as warm, so those delicious pockets of warm air weren’t present, but still mild and sunny, with the lingering scent of spring. Dan and I went up the road a little ways to hike around a parcel of crown land that Dan wanted to scout as a potential location for a new MAPS study site (MAPS – which stands for Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship – is a banding program that helps give clues about the “why” to complement the “whether” species are declining that other studies, such as the Breeding Bird Survey, detect; through the use of banding the program helps to determine birth and death rates, as well as other important information on territories and dispersal). We hiked about two kilometers, returning to the Jeep with our feet soaked by the soft, melting snow that still covered much of the woods. But what a splendid afternoon.

The sun and mild temperatures have melted the snow off my small little “garden”, the bit of earth that I cleared and planted with bulbs last October. I planted six types of bulbs: crocus, mini iris, scilla, allium, Nectaroscordum, and fritillaria. The latter three are all late spring bloomers, although the fritillaria might start blooming in late April. The other three, however, are all early spring bloomers. I did plant the bulbs in a particular arrangement last fall, but I can’t remember what went where now. There are shoots poking through the soft dirt already, encouraged by the warm sun and mild weather, but I don’t know who they belong to. I’m looking forward to their blooms!

And finally, the first moth of the season! I was standing outside last night, waiting for Raven to pee. Raven, however, was feeling a little freaked out by the barks of a dog a kilometer or so down the road echoing up the lake. When she gets like that, she won’t pee, despite much coaxing (she does know the command, and under ordinary circumstances will go right out and pee quickly and we can go inside again). So while I stood there waiting for her to gather her courage or whatever she was looking for, a moth flew in and started fluttering around our yard light! I quickly dashed inside to grab my insect net, and snagged it from up on the wall of the house. I suddenly didn’t feel so annoyed with Raven for taking her sweet time.

The moth was a Morrison’s Sallow, Eupsilia morrisoni. They are relatively common and widespread, and among the earliest to emerge in the spring, having spent the winter tucked into some crevice or nook as an adult moth. They will occasionally make appearances during the winter on exceptionally warm days/evenings. Although our temperature made it up to 12 C (54 F) during the day, by the time I was putting everyone to bed at midnight it had dropped to 2 C (36 F) again, and while I thought perhaps the warm sun might have roused somebody from their winter slumber, I had expected any moths to show up would be in the first hour or two after dusk, while it was still somewhat warm. I was quite surprised to see a moth out and about so late, after the temperature had dropped so much. I tucked it in the fridge overnight (it’s actually warmer in the fridge than it was outside, ironically) and took photos and released it this morning, setting it in the sun where it could warm up and then go off to find its own nook to crawl into again.

Mothing for the greater good

I love citizen science projects. I try to participate in the ones that I’m able, when I can, and if I remember (not always a given if I’m busy). The phrase citizen science refers to projects that rely on the input of volunteer participants to collect the data, usually from the comfort of their own homes or local region. Such projects have a long history – for instance, the Christmas Bird Count is effectively a citizen science project that dates back to the early 1900s. Other bird projects that rely on citizen science are the Great Backyard Bird Count and Project Feederwatch, and the data organization website eBird is entirely a citizen science undertaking.

There are other similar projects that deal with other organisms or ecosystems as a whole, as well. There are versions of the Christmas Bird Count for both butterflies and dragonflies. The development of the blogging community has added a twist to citizen science, in that bloggers are encouraged to participate in particular projects and then write about their experience. Examples might be the Blogger Bio Blitz or International Rock-flipping Day. These projects go a long way toward developing databases and expanding our knowledge about various species.

I have been working a bit recently on the maps for the moth field guide. I’ve been learning GIS software so that I can use that to plot the maps. One of the things I did this morning was sit down and map all of the locations for which I currently have data. Last year I had solicited checklists and data from the contributors to Moth Photographers Group, with the intention of compiling these resources to map ranges for the moths in the book. This field guide will be the first to offer range maps for species in the region the book covers, which we’re excited about.

However, key to making good range maps is having data. Although I got a lot of great lists from the MPG photographers, when I plotted them on a map they still left considerable gaps in coverage and data. Even some of the couple dozen points that are shown actually only have less than a couple dozen species for that point, the result of a moth’er’s visit to a friend’s place, or while on a trip.

So as I sat there figuring out where the additional data would come from, and then why there isn’t much data in the first place, my thoughts began to form themselves into an idea. Why not create a citizen science project for moths? I could almost guarantee that I’m not the only one looking for good data, and the information collected from such a project would have far-reaching applications.

And so this afternoon I sat down and created the North American Moths Backyard Inventory project, NAMBI for short. I really hope that NAMBI will become as popular as other blogger initiatives I’ve participated in and/or know about. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it has the potential to make some great discoveries, since there’s so little known about moths and so few people paying attention to them relative to other groups of organisms. Examples would be Wanderin’ Weeta’s Shy Cosmet record, a provincial first, or Roundtop Ruminations’ Black Witch discovery, a county first and state second. Chances are these moths have occurred in these regions before, possibly quite regularly in the case of the Cosmet – just no one’s been out looking.

I invite all my readers to join in over the course of this year and submit their moth observations to NAMBI. Participating is easy. There’s no set date, weekend or week. Participate as often or as infrequently as you like. Simply check your back porch light, set up a sheet and blacklight, or put out a light trap or sugar goop if you want. Invite some friends over and make a social event of it, or enjoy the peace and quiet by yourself. Set up in your backyard, go down the street to your neighbourhood nature patch, or see what you get while you’re out camping. How you go about it is completely up to you!

I intend for the NAMBI blog to be open to all participants (although I think I have to add you as an author first), and I really hope that folks will start contributing their photos and stories to create a dynamic website. I have also created a NAMBI Flickr Group where people can share their photos (both of moths and moth’ers), get identifications, and ask questions and share anecdotes in the group’s discussion boards.

Sure, I stand to benefit tremendously from the data contributed to the project, and my motivation for starting it was partially driven by selfish reasons. However, I think that this is something that has a much broader application than simply some range maps for a book, just the way that eBird is being used for science projects and research on birds. Not to mention that I think people will really have fun mothing once they’ve tried it…

And of course, spread the word! Encourage others to participate, put a banner up on your blog. As the saying goes – the more the merrier!

A moth’er’s materials

I don’t think I’ve ever gone into any detail regarding the equipment I use for mothing. I had a comment on yesterday’s post asking for more information about it, so I though I would follow up and make that the subject of today’s post. That way, interested readers can gather their own mothing equipment if they wanted, and it would be with lots of time before the spring mothing period begins!

In reality, you don’t really need to have special equipment in order to enjoy moths. Especially in the country, but also in urban areas, you can go outside and check your porch light or the windowsills around windows where you have your lights on. Moths and other crazy creatures will be drawn in to just about any artificial light source.

If your curiosity has got the better of you, however, you can up the ante by setting up a white sheet. These will also work with just a simple incandescent shone against them, but what really brings in the bugs is to use a lightbulb that projects partially in the UV spectrum, like a blacklight. Make sure you’re using a standard cotton sheet – synthetic materials tend not to glow under blacklight the same way.

It’s not clear why moths, beetles and other bugs are attracted to UV light; it might have something to do with the wavelengths mimicking the pheromones of other individuals in the way they hit the bug’s antennae. Another hypothesis as to why moths come to light is that they navigate using the moon, and since the moon is simply shining with reflected sunlight, it’s possible the bulbs mimic the UV in the moon/sunlight. Regardless of the reason that it does, UV bulbs really work.

I have three types of mothing equipment: sheets, trap and “goop”. This is my sheet equipment. It consists of a white sheet, a spring-clamp light bracket and UV bulb, and a tripod (not pictured). I hang a sheet from a clothesline or a rope strung between a couple of trees, clamp the light bracket with bulb onto the tripod, and set it up in front. You’ll have more success if at least one side of the sheet faces an open area, since the light will broadcast farther that way and draw moths in from further away.

The two bulbs I have shown here are a blacklight and a mercury vapour. The blacklight is easily available (as is the spring-clamp bracket) from any Home Depot or Canadian Tire or similar stores that sell bulbs. I’ve found the compact fluorescents to be brighter than the incandescent versions. All blacklights have the finicky requirement of being held upright – I found out the hard way that if you hang a blacklight upside down it burns out within a few minutes. The exception to this is the tube-style, which you can get at party stores and the like.

The mercury vapour is less easy to come by, and you may end up having to go to a specialty lighting store to find it. I ordered mine off eBay. Unfortunately, when they arrived I discovered they had mogul bases – the old-style, inch-and-a-half diameter size – which wouldn’t fit into the sockets I had. So I then had to buy a converter off eBay (also not available in Home Depot) to fit my mogul bulb into my normal socket. Works like a charm, but wasn’t so cheap.

The upside to mercury vapour is that it’s really, really bright and so broadcasts a much greater distance than a blacklight. The light is also stronger, and so you’ll end up with more moths coming to your light than you would with simply a blacklight. The downside is that it’s more expensive, and it burns hotter than a blacklight. Also, because it’s so bright and it’s casting UV rays, you’re advised not to look directly at it. When you buy your first mercury vapour bulb, you know you’ve gone hardcore. It’s like buying yourself your first several-hundred-dollar pair of binoculars.

The other way you know you’ve gone hardcore is that you build yourself a moth trap. Moth traps are delightfully easy to make for the reward they offer. They have the advantage of allowing you to run a light all night, without having to actually be present to check what’s come in to the sheet. You can run them rain or (moon)shine, with the proper protection. And, they keep all your moths contained until you get up in the morning and start going through them over your cup of coffee.

The general principal of a trap is that the moths come in to the light, and then during all their frantic fluttering around (in that way moths have around lights) they end up falling down the funnel. Once into the trap, it’s very difficult for them to find their way back out. Then climb onto some of the stuff you’ve tucked inside and wait for you to come release them the next morning. Any set of equipment that accomplishes this goal will work, and there are different styles to approach it. My trap is a large rubbermaid storage tub (shown below), while TheMothMan‘s (pictured above) is a garbage can with a plastic sheet over top (or at least it was, I think he’s switched out his arrangement recently).

Of course, when using a trap there are obvious ethics involved. Make sure that you don’t keep your moths in the trap longer than necessary. If you want to hold some for photographing or showing off to a friend, that’s fine, but make sure you put them in a container and place them in the fridge. Pill bottles are a great size for this (there are some shown in the photo of the folded sheet above), and you can ask your local pharmacist if they may have some you could have. Alternatively, they can be ordered from specialty shops online, but basically any smallish container works fine – clear ones are best since you can see what’s inside. The cool temperature of the fridge will keep moths calm and lower their metabolism, putting them into a sort of torpid state. This same applies to any moth you want to keep from your sheet setup. Don’t place your trap in a location where the morning sun is likely to rise and heat it up before you can come out to rescue the moths (or if you have no choice, then make sure you’re up before the sun is very high).

Also, protect the trap from rain as best as you can. This can be done by placing a glass bowl inverted overtop of the bulb. You don’t want the rain hitting your bulbs, and it’s better not to have it draining into the trap, either, if you can (although if your trap is made to drain properly then it’s not the end of the world; if it’s not, however, you can end up with several inches of water and dozens of dead moths floating on top). Moths will still fly in the rain, so just because it’s rainy won’t mean there’s no moths. If you don’t have a glass bowl, you could also string up a tarp or put the trap under an overhang where it won’t get rained on. When you’re releasing the moths from the trap, make sure you release them into long grass or thick shrubs, so that they have protection from predators. Also, try not to dump a hundred moths all in one spot if you can – as soon as a predator such as a bird stumbles onto the smorgasbord, that’s it for the bunch. You can release them during the day, just make sure it’s into appropriate cover. If you have no appropriate cover, try to release them at night.

As for the details of trap construction… Choose whatever container you prefer. It needs to be reasonably deep, but if you don’t like leaning into a garbage can then it’s okay to go for something shallower. The main concern is that it will fit your funnel. The funnel is a large-sized plastic funnel the likes of which you can get from Home Depot or Canadian Tire or other hardware/auto stores. This one is 10″ across, I believe. The bottom part of the funnel has been cut off, resulting in a 4″ opening. Attached to the bottom is a 4″ plastic plant pot with its bottom cut off, extending the funnel but still leaving the mouth wide enough to accommodate large moths.

Inside the funnel is the trickiest part of the trap. You’ll need to get a light socket with a cord (the spring-clamp bracket usually has a screw that will release the socket from the clamp), or otherwise make your own. The socket needs to be suspended in the middle of the funnel, so that the base is about halfway down. In my trap this was done by cutting some pieces of clear acrylic to the appropriate size/shape and securing them inside the funnel with silicone. You could also use strong wire or some other means. If you use acrylic it can be used as struts to support your glass dome, just make sure that it sticks up high enough to leave a gap for the moths to enter. If you use wire, make sure it’s strong enough to support your dome, and use a dome that’s smaller in diameter than your funnel, or otherwise build additional supports (eg blocks of wood) outside the funnel to support the dome. Now that the hard part is done, measure and cut out a circle from your trap’s lid that you can slide the funnel into.

Inside the trap, you need to make sure there’s something for the moths to cling to. One of the best things is empty egg cartons, or other items that are similarly rough and full of nooks. Moths like to tuck themselves into nooks, like they would hide under a piece of bark, and egg cartons appeal to this. I buy my eggs in plastic cartons, however, so many of my substrate items are actually biodegradable seed-starting trays. When you put them into the trap, stack them around the outside. This leaves room for the funnel, but moths that enter the trap also have the inclination to head for the walls, and putting the substrate against the walls will mean they’re more likely to stay in the trap.

The third and final tool moth’ers use for attracting moths is a syrupy “goop” that is spread on trees or logs to draw in nectar-feeders that may have limited interest in the light (not all species of moths are attracted to light). Most moths don’t eat as adults, but there are a few that sup on flower nectar or tree sap, and this is the group that the goop will appeal to. To make it, throw an overripe banana, a dollop of molasses, a scoop of brown sugar, and a few chugs of cheap beer into a blender and mix it all together. If you get the impression that the measurements don’t need to be precise, you’re correct. Anything sweet and sugary will appeal to them, so if you’re missing an ingredient that’s okay too, although the beer really is a helpful addition.

Take this concoction and, using a wide brush like you might paint your house with, paint it onto the trunks of a few trees or logs. It may take the moths a little while to find it, so it’s good to put it out early in the evening. Note that it has the potential to stain, so don’t put it onto your house siding or anything you might be worried about leaving a mark. Goop is most effective on cooler nights, in early spring or late fall, but can be used at any time of the year.

Pretty much any evening where the temperature is up around 10 oC (50 oF) and above there’s the potential for decent mothing, although naturally cooler evenings will be slower than warmer evenings within the same time period, and cooler months will garner fewer moths than warmer months. The height of mothing is really June and July – that’s when the most colourful moths are out and about, and the greatest diversity – but any warm night is good mothing.

So there you are! All set to get going watching moths in your own backyard. Us northern folks still have another couple of months before the temperatures are warm enough to get started, but I suspect folks down in the balmy south could be mothing year round. A good evening of mothing can be a fun experience, particuarly as a social event – invite a few friends over, string some sheets up, crack open a couple beers (or glasses of wine), and laugh and have a good time. And let me know what you get!

Summer colours

Note: If you’re looking for information on The Moth and Me, please visit the official carnival site.

Harris’s Three-Spot (Harrisimemna trisignata)

One of the advantages of having multiple different projects on the go is that if you start to feel weary with one, or are waiting on something before you can continue, or just need a change of pace, you’ve got several other things to turn to that will still keep you busy. This morning I pulled out my paints for the first time in perhaps six months or more. Now that the warbler drawings were all wrapped up, it was time to sit down with the blackbirds. I had been procrastinating on getting started because I didn’t have a good workspace downstairs in my living room cum study. I finally got around to rearranging things a bit and moving my drafting table down from Dan’s studio (neither of us wanted to work in the same space, for a number of reasons, and since I spend half my time at the computer and he has more need of the extra space, he got the second bedroom). I’m thinking I might take some photos of my works-in-progress and post them from time to time. I have 55 blackbirds to paint between now and July, so much of my time will be occupied with that, I suspect.

Scarlet-winged Lichen Moth (Hypoprepia miniata)

However, prior to that, while I was procrastinating, I turned to the moth book to do some work on that for a while. One of the things that I’d been meaning to get to for a while was organizing and labeling my moth photos. I had a collection of 374 unidentified/unlabeled images from the warm weather (how long ago that seems right now!), and I’ve been whittling that down, slowly. And that’s just the photos I took since moving here. I have an additional 762 photos from my parents’ old place and Toronto. Because the whole point of my friend and I doing this book is that there isn’t a good easy reference guide currently out there, progress has been slower than I might like. I’ve gone through and identified and labeled 125 so far. Just a thousand left to go!

Imperial Moth (Eacles imperialis)

But boy, going through those photos really brought back the warm summer evenings, the stars glowing overhead, the still, humid air, the crickets chirping in the grass, the moths fluttering at the porch lights. The delight in standing on the deck, looking over the creatures drawn to the light, discovering something new, something interesting, something colourful. The expectation as the top of the moth trap is opened, a hundred soft little bodies clinging to the egg cartons inside, the excitement over unusual finds. The tediousness of taking them out of the fridge where they had been held, chilled to keep them calm, and sitting them on a leaf to have their photo taken. Over and over. Hm.

Brown Scoopwing (Calledapteryx dryopterata)

I am full of anticipation for those first mild evenings in early April, perhaps even late March if we’re lucky enough to get an exceptionally warm spell. What plans I have for those evenings. My lamps are carefully tucked away, my white sheets lie folded, my trap is disassembled and stored in the garden shed. But come April they’ll all be brought out, dusted off, and, hopefully, drawing in the moths once again. What mysteries will the lights reveal this year, in this new location?

Beautiful Wood-Nymph (Eudryas grata)

By the end of the warm season, it’s easy to begin feeling tired out with a subject, to have difficulty maintaining interest and excitement over such a long period. I feel guilty, in the fall, for choosing not to put my light out on a nice evening, or grab my binoculars and go birding on a warm afternoon, but eventually one begins to burn out, the flame that burned so strongly and brightly in the spring finally running out of fuel, flickering and sputtering reluctantly. However, nothing like five long, dark months of cold and snow to renew the fuel banks for the flame. After five months of limited activity, this pony has been confined inside far too long, she’s champing at the bit, eager to get out and stretch her legs.

Light Marathyssa (Marathyssa basalis)

In the meantime, to get me through the remaining six weeks of winter, I browse through my photos, basking in the memories of warmth and sunshine and verdent green foliage that they conjure. I came across a photo I took when we first moved here, a view of our house from the dock, the trees so lush and green you can only see the top where it peeks out above the leaves. Sapphire blue sky, clear cool water, lilypads and a hammock.

Black-and-yellow Lichen Moth (Lycomorpha pholus)

It seems we’re always looking ahead to the next season, always waiting for that next exciting thing, so often we forget to stop and enjoy what’s here right now. There is magic to the snowy landscape, the crystal ice sheaths wrapped around the trees, the frost on the windows and the crunch underfoot. I appreciate winter, sure. But as much as I see the beauty in the cold season… how can you not anticipate spring?

Large Tolype (Tolype velleda)