Seabrooke Leckie is a freelance biologist and writer living in rural eastern Ontario. She holds a B.Sc.H. in Zoology and has worked on field research contracts in many parts of the continent, from California to Québec, British Columbia to Ohio, as well as her home province of Ontario. She discovered moths quite by accident one summer while away on contract, and they’ve since become her number one passion. Birds are her second interest; she is a federally-licensed bird bander and volunteers each summer with a local bird research organization. She’s the co-author of the new Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America, and has been involved with other publications such as the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas and the newsletter of the Ontario Field Ornithologists. Most afternoons you can find her outdoors, peering closely at flora and fauna, camera in hand; nights, of course, are spent at her moth sheet. She blogs her discoveries at her website, seabrookeleckie.com.
Seabrooke sent this photos and description of her setup:
This is what I use for most of my mothing while I’m at home. The sheet is tacked to the side of our log home with thumbtacks/pushpins. This section of the wall is protected by a 5-foot-wide roof overhang and is about 12 feet long, which keeps the sheet and light bulb out of the rain except in windy conditions. The trap is homemade; the funnel and socket were made for me from materials available at the local home improvement store by the co-author of the PFG to Moths, David Beadle; I chose the tub and bulb. The bulb is a 250W mercury vapour, which is probably a little overkill but all they had when I was looking to buy a MV bulb. Inside, the trap is filled with egg cartons – I should emphasize that it’s a live trap, so captured moths are released the next morning; I don’t maintain a pinned collection (my collection is all in photos on my hard drive). Our home is in a rural setting, surrounded by open meadow bordered by mixed forests, so we get a lot of diversity here. One of these days I’ll actually get around to counting up how many species I’ve seen. 😉