Mothing, Part Two

After publishing the recent blog post about mothing, I realized I missed giving some important information and so will add that now. 

First off all, while new moths and other insects DO appear throughout the night, it is not necessary to stay up all night! If you want to get an idea about the creatures that share your space, you can stay up a couple of hours after dark, or only one hour if that’s all you can commit to. Some of the most interesting things I’ve seen have arrived in the first hour. Here when I do my mothing stations I usually turn off the lights by 2am, earlier if I haven’t seen any new insects in 20 minutes. Different species of insects are active at different times of the night so new things may keep showing up, but it is 100% not necessary to stay up all night! 

Second, you should turn the lights on at your mothing station or stations before it is fully dark, as some things start flying at dusk. If your lights are already on these insects may be “caught” on your sheet. And if you start looking right away, who knows what you might see! I’ve noticed the last two times I’ve done mothing that the very cool male railroad worm with the crazy antennae shows up in the first ten minutes and then disappears, not to be seen again all night. If I was in the house waiting for full dark, I never would have seen him!

And lastly, you might be wondering where on earth to put the lights and the sheet in the first place. The variety will likely be highest if you position the sheet and lights where insects would naturally be flying by. I live in the forest so it is easy finding spots. I recognize that not everyone lives in a forest, so just find a spot that is maybe by a garden, or some trees or bushes. However, a limiting factor that is sure to come up is how long of an extension cord do you have? Unless you want to use a generator, you will be limited to how far your cord can reach from the outlet. Even if the positioning of the sheet and lights is not ideal, it is likely the that the lights will still attract things, and who knows what those things will be unless you try! If you’ve never done mothing before, everything you get and see is bound to be new, so just go ahead and try. Sometimes when I’m mothing I will leave on the two lights beside our garage and moths will be attracted to those too. You can do the same, letting your house act like the white sheet. 

There can always be a next time when you can make adjustments. It’s all about experimentation and learning from past tries. Here I’ve decided to do this at least once a month until fall so I can compare notes.

I hope you try it and that you get some interesting things to talk about! Good luck and please let me know how it goes; I always love hearing from blog subscribers!