PLEASE make sure you buy only National Moth Week by friendsebec products.

The first Moth Night I attended was back in 2012. I was an avid birder for an entire 2 years at that point, but once you get the nature spark, it pulls you in.  Birding is exciting, and as a “lister,” I have a natural passion to see “new” creatures …. “Lifers” as we call it in birding.

Birding starts to slow after the May migration wanes, and doesn’t pick up again until August with shorebird migration. Sooooo… what to do during that “downtime” in June and July… that’s where the moths come in!

I admit it, I came in to this not knowing what to expect. I saw there was a National Moth Week kickoff event that we saw advertised, and decided to check it out.  What did I know about moths? Well, they flit around lights, they eat holes in your sweaters and are boring, right? WRONG!

We have a term in Birding called “Spark Bird” – that’s the bird that hooks you in and gets you excited (and in some cases, obsessed) about birds.  Well, I had a “Spark Moth” that intrigued me back in 2009 – the Royal Walnut Moth (or Regal Moth) … I found it barely flitting around in my front yard. This thing was enormous and gorgeous.  I decided I needed to get it to rehab because “it didn’t look like it was healthy.” Little did I know, they live to reproduce and that’s it.   I actually went so far as to contact a professor in New York State to figure out how to get it help..I soon was educated in Silk Moth life-cycles and started to get the “bug” to learn more about moths.

When my (then boyfriend, now) husband and I first attended National Moth Week events in NJ, we could not get enough! We went from event to event, “lifing” new moths one more beautiful than the last.  It even got to the point where each year, we put the week on our calendars well in advance to make sure we didn’t commit ourselves to other events, because, we had moths to see!

These creatures truly are amazing. They’re not like the sparrows of the insect world (what we call LBJ’s (Little Brown Jobs))  They are colorful, beautiful and interesting in their own right.

One thing that amuses non-birders about us crazy birders is that we often “chase” rare birds.. that is, we will often share information about the location of a rare or unusual bird withing the community and others will come and look for it. If you miss it, it is called “dipping.”   Well, for me, mothing is no different.  A friend of mine worked at a car dealership in Keyport, NJ and had posted that a Luna Moth (for some, a “holy grail” moth) was hanging out on the side wall of the dealership.  Of course, I was at work in Jersey City, and had to get home, get my car and make my way to Keyport…. yes, I dipped!  But alas, much like birding, other opportunities arise.   The next year, my husband and I vacationed in New Hampshire and had a “flyby” …. in the birding world, this is called a “BVD” (Better Views Desired) … and then, a month later, a friend got word out that he had a Luna Moth just hanging out on his garage door, and welcomed us to his home for what we call in the birding world “upgrade.”   Yessssss!!!

Much like birding, people have their favorite “patches,” that is, a favorite spot to go and observe.   For some reason, I always had luck at our local Park and Ride. By the time I would leave for work, these beautiful creatures would “roost” on the side of the building. It actually started to make me look forward to my commute (if that’s possible.)

So here we are in 2020 – Quarantine, Lockdown, Social Distancing…. sigh! The natural world has been the one constant that gets me through the days (and nights.) Whether it is checking out which birds come to our feeder, what beetles are eating our plants in our garden, or watching NEOWISE, the comet move higher into the sky- it helps to go back to the basics sometimes to feel connected.

You can be sure of one thing… I have our lights, our sheet and iNaturalist all ready to go for National Moth Week 2020.  I can’t wait to hear all the reports.

Good Birding (ehhh, Mothing) to you!

Contributing to National Moth Week with iNaturalist is simple:

Download the free iNaturalist app, photograph and make a separate observation for each moth, check that the location and date are correct, and identify each as precisely as you can. It’s ok if you can just get to family.

All moths observed between July 18 – 26 will be automatically included!

Be sure to join the National Moth Week 2020 project as well: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/national-moth-week-2020

When National Moth Week announced sign-ups for this year, I was once again filled with excitement. Mike and I had plans to set up multiple nights and multiple locations. Normally we set up near the barn (source of electricity), but this year we wanted to try and go out into the meadows. It would require many more extension cords and maybe a car battery, but we wanted to see how the meadow population compared to what shows up near the barn.

Then the SARS-CoV-2 virus hit the United States and with it a poor response to the pandemic. Mike and I both have children and families, the risk of holding an event would be too high for us. We decided to nix it this year, and while it makes my heart heavy, I know it’s the right choice.

But Moth Night must go on! This year I am going to set up my lights in my own backyard and live tweet and Instagram what I see. Most events I have participated in this year have been virtual, so why not make a virtual Moth Night?! And I haven’t taken an inventory of my back yard for a few years. I recently installed a meadow in my own backyard, and I am curious to see if it has made an impact on the biodiversity in my little .33 acres. Anecdotally I can say that this year I am seeing more lightning bugs, but what has the impact been for moths?

I use a pretty simple setup: one old white sheet from my college days, one black light (also from my college days), one photo backdrop support system to hang the sheet,  one mercury vapor light, and a rain shield for the light in case of rain. I use my grandfather’s old tripod for stabilizing the mercury vapor light. He was a photographer when he first immigrated to this country and the tripod was one of the items he brought with him from Germany.  The photo backdrop needs to be anchored or it will topple over, we usually rig something together using bungee cords and weights. We have also used tent stakes and rope to successfully keep it upright. For identifications, I use the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America, and the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America for the other insect guests that stop by.

Please join me on July 19^th, 2020 via Twitter and Instagram to see what I find in my backyard. Will the Regal Moth return this year? Will I see any Sphingids? How many Noctuids and Geometrids will there be? I can’t wait to find out!

Tanya Dapkey is an entomologist working in the Patrick Center for Environmental Research in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia where she studies stream macroinvertebrates to determine water quality. She has an Masters in Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and worked with Dr. Daniel Janzen for almost 15 years on the Lepidoptera of the ACG project. Learn more about her at https://www.tanyadapkey.com/ and follow her on Twitter and Instagram: @TanyaDapkey

Jacob Gorneau was 15 when he came to a moth night in East Brunswick, NJ, in 2013. He and his dad traveled more than 150 miles from upstate New York to meet the NMW team, who’d started the observance just a year earlier. By then, however, Jacob already was a valuable contributor to NMW’s success.

“I had learned about National Moth Week through a citizen science site, Project Noah, (an NMW partner organization) and was able to work as a liaison between Project Noah and NMW for its first year in 2012,” he said.

Jacob’s fascination with moths and the natural world began early. He was hooked after seeing a Black Witch moth on a family trip to Florida. “I couldn’t believe the moth was as large as the geckos near it! I think that was the first time that I became thoroughly enamored with moths.”

To further his interest in insects, he’d challenge himself to stay outside until he found something he’d never seen before. (Sounds like a great way to interest kids in nature.)

“What became clear quickly was how easy it was to see a new moth, spider or any other kind of arthropod,” he said. “The more I learned about how diverse arthropods are, the more I got interested!”

Jacob helped spread the word about NMW to other groups and events. His valuable and growing knowledge about moths helped NMW become more widely known. In 2013, he was invited to become the youngest member of the NMW team.

“I think National Moth Week is an important cause, because looking for moths is an activity for everyone, and learning more about them invites people to have a more open mind when it comes to other organisms – like snakes and spiders – that might be surrounded by a cloud of misconceptions,” he said.

“Mothing is great because all it requires is leaving an outside light on or having an inexpensive mothing setup, and nature will come to you. A lot of common misunderstandings about moths and other arthropods come from a place of fear, and I think the best tool against this fear is education. The outdoors is a great classroom”

This spring, Jacob graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., with a degree in entomology. He will begin graduate studies this fall at San Francisco State University through the California Academy of Sciences. “I hope to pursue a career in academia that incorporates a lot of evolutionary biology and collections-based museum work.”

National Moth Week congratulates Jacob on his graduation and looks forward to many more years of collaboration. 

RedBubble is the only official NMW store. Please do not buy products with our logo from other stores – they are using it without permission! Thank you.

There are big moths and small moths,                

Even green moths occur,

And moths that like sunshine—

Strange what some moths prefer!

There are moths patterned like fabrics,

All embroidered and such,

And moths that are so plain,

Well, you’d think they are dust!

There are moths that sip nectar,

That fly from flower to flower,

And moths that sip nothing–

They starve hour by hour!

There are moths without wings

That crawl like a bug,

And moths that love wool–

Whose babies eat rugs!

There are moths that are immigrants

That have flown hundreds of miles,

And moths no one can identify,

Except for Ken Childs!

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Carl Barrentine is an avid moth’er and poet in Spokane, Washington, USA. He is a NMW team member and submitted an embarrassing number of moth observations to BugGuide and lepsnap.

Ken Childs is one of Carl’s  mothing mentors. His contributions to BugGuide and the Moth Photographers Group have contributed to the education and enriched the lives many thousands of individuals as well as countless insect photographers.

It was quite late when I joined the NMW this year, but that didn’t stop me from leaving the lights on. We started setting up at dusk on July 30th in my backyard by hanging an old pale colored sheet and leaving the lights on until midnight. We went out every couple of minutes to check for any moth visitors but we didn’t get any for several hours. My sister was pretty pepped up about it and insisted on waiting a couple of hours past the end of NMW for them to appear. When we checked for the last time that night, we found a small visitor at last! It was very tiny and it moved around so much that we didn’t get the chance to photograph it unfortunately, but we both were so happy that at least one moth came to our first mothing night.

Before going to sleep we discussed our night and thought about possible reasons why we didn’t see many moths; maybe the light was not bright enough to attract them, maybe the type of light bulb was not the best, maybe we checked on them too frequently, maybe we need to use bait, maybe the season was not good for mothing, maybe the plants around the sheet might have made a confined area that the moths did not like. We have so many questions and so much to learn. We have already started researching to become better moth-ers. Soon, we hope, we will be learning how to improve our night time photography skills too.

This was our first night mothing and even though we didn’t attract many moths, we had so much fun. We will continue setting up mothing nights during the year and invite our friends and family to join and share in our discoveries.

We can hardly wait for next year’s NMW!

I moved to Massachusetts from Texas in 2014, and I was amazed at the diversity of insects to be found in the woods and meadows here. My weekends have since been filled with long walks during which I have happily and somewhat obsessively photographed thousands of moths, butterflies, and caterpillars among other things.

A gallery of many of these photos can be found here: http://isobellefox.deviantart.com/gallery/

In 2015, I began raising and releasing both butterflies and moths, and it was during this time that I discovered the Caterpillar Lab (http://www.thecaterpillarlab.org/). During a visit to one of the Lab’s public outreach events, I overheard a conversation about “mothing,” and I had a bit of a eureka moment.
Why, after all of the years of photographing moths on various porches and on the walls of convenience stores and other obscure late night locations, had it never occurred to me to actively try to draw them to my own backyard?
It seemed so obvious!
I began my own mothing adventure in the early spring of 2016, with a modest set up: a single blacklight bulb and a bit of curtain cloth draped over a small greenhouse enclosure. I was immediately delighted with the results and spent many, many nights experimenting with different lights. As the nights grew warmer, I observed ever increasing diversity in the population of moths and other insects that would visit my light, and I became more and more interested. I eventually purchased a brighter, larger blacklight and moved my mothing station to the side of a storage shed. With a brighter light and a flatter, larger surface area, my success rate vastly increased. My mothing sessions usually lasted from sundown until around 12 or 1am.
During this time, I also began to make my first attempts at identifying the moths that I was photographing each evening. I gradually found several websites and a few facebook groups devoted to the moths of Massachusetts.
It was, in fact, through these groups that I became aware of National Moth Week and enthusiastically signed up to have my already nightly backyard mothing sessions included in the event for 2016.
For the mothing seaons of 2016, I have managed to tentatively identify 241 moths, though I still have many photographs that are in need of research – something I am enjoying during these long, grey Winter months.
During National Moth Week, I recorded 86 species. Among my favorites were Suzuki’s Promalactis Moth, a beautiful, brightly colored micromoth, and the Large Maple Spanworm, which was easily the biggest moth I saw all year.

I am definitely still an amateur in the often confusing field of moth identification. I do my best and attempt to verify my findings using various rescources in the form of books, websites, and social media groups, but even with the help of those who are vastly more knowledgable, I have no doubt that many of my identifications are erroneous. There are also plenty of moths which simply manage to defy even my best efforts. This is, however,
part of the draw of mothing for me: there is always something new to see and something new to learn!

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