Warren Krupsaw shares his technique and tips on how to photograph moths. Click on the link below to read more.

We all have our cross to bear; mine weighed 23 pounds. Camera on tripod, 4 other lenses, plus all the other stuff a well-prepared nature photographer (landscape & detail) should have on hand. And now, after more than four decades of serious photography, I wanted to ADD to it with the acquisition of a Canon G-9 as a back-up camera? I must be crazy (or so my wife thought).

That was three years ago. Now I’m using a G-11 for ALL my photography and find that it will accomplish approximately 90% of what my weightier, full-fledged system would do without making a bad back worse.

Fooling around with my new point & shoot (I prefer to think of it as “compose & shoot”), I held the camera in one hand and attempted to photograph the finger-tip of my other hand. Lo and Behold, it worked! The finger-tip was in focus so now it occurred to me it could be used to show scale as well as a setting for the proper subject.  Click here to read more.

http://www.thephotoargus.com/mothography-101/

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!

***

The Moth Diaries is the title of my forthcoming book about our experience as moth watching beginners. As a natural history writer I write about birds and environments. Along with my husband, retired ecologist who spent his career studying island biogeography, we thought we were pretty familiar with the day time world around us. However, when we began to hang out a light to meet the moths, we were humbled and amazed by the night time world that surrounded us. Academically we appreciated moths, but in practice we had been almost totally unaware of what we were missing. Yes, even in our cities and suburbs there is an astonishing wealth of moths awaiting everyone who watches. Moth watching is a process that is so enticing we had to share it.

Every day for a year we recorded the data, kept a diary you might say. Before our Maine winter snow had melted we learned of Facebook groups and other online resources we could look forward to using as spring brought us moths. Tantalizing reports from the south made us wonder could reports from other regions show us what moths to expect? Yes. Their posts helped us riffle through the field guide for a picture match, which is how most beginners learn to identify moths.  I, however, still do not feel I need to put a name on every moth I see anymore than I feel the need to identify every plant I see. (Okay, I’m actually pretty much a botanist— but not a horticulturist—so I do draw the line at naming every garden specimen I see. I just appreciate the flowers—and so it is with moths. )

At first we enjoyed holding a Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glass over the moths. The moths often did not sit around for that. Better to view their portraits on computer screen where one can really appreciate their fantastic detail. The development of digital cameras and the publication of newer field guides have ushered in a revolution much like that which swept the birding world some years ago. Moth watching is the new birding, or what to do when your bird list is pretty full.

Moth enthusiasts can work their way as far as they wish through the spectrum of photographing with their smartphone, using a simple point and shoot camera with good macro capabilities, to buying and learning to use whatever Single Lens Reflex camera and fancy lenses they can afford. We also found there is a wide gamut of options from free sharpening software to using programs like Photoshop to improve moth photos beyond simple cropping etc. The same can be said for lights: use your porch light, a party ultraviolet bulb, an ordinary bug zapper having cut the wire that electrocutes the insects, to a special UV bulb or even a mercury vapor lamp from commercial suppliers.

Almost every night all summer long—from frost to frost—we saw a moth that was new to us. They ranged from the celebrity-in-sunglasses markings of the Boldly-marked Archips, Archips dissitana, or the dazzling little Silver-spotted Fern  Moth, Callopistria cordata, to the almost wolfish Dusky Hooded Owlet, Cucullia intermedia, and of course, everyone’s favorite, the lovely Luna, Actias luna. (Unlke in Britain where moth common names are well established, in this country that is not so. Serious moth-ers prefer to use the scientific name and perhaps even add the Hodges number.)  Note the raindrops on the Luna’s wing—unless there was a full moon or hard rain or it was too windy, the moths flew.  We lured them with sugar bait or beat the bushes for their caterpillars when we felt up to that even more challenging fun.

The beginning moth watcher will find that online Facebook pages for your region are cruised by experts who race each other to identify your photographs of mystery moths. Or blow your mind with images from around the world with the Mothing and Moth-watching Group page on Facebook. You may start dreaming of mothing vacations in Malaysia or Costa Rica!   MPG (Moth Photographers Group) and bugguide.net offer more challenge, more experts, and there are many citizen science pages such as BAMONA, Butterfly and Moths of North America where you can post your data on line.  The Xerces Society focuses exclusively on invertebrates, and various state experiment stations have ongoing moth research. Many Universities can connect you with experts to contact. Once you become serious about the science, you will find workshops where you can learn about scholarly references, museums of the world, field pinning, serious specimen preparing and dissection, and collection care. (What a thrill when we found a moth that Cornell University was interested in!)  Wherever you are along your journey, there is always something more to be learned, another moth to see.

Moth watching offers a life-long passion. You will never run out of moths (if we humans don’t spoil all the habitat first).Even if you do not love data, you may find yourself filing moth photos and writing your very own mothing diary. You will marvel that such wonders were at your doorstep all the while. You just needed to learn to look. What a grand beginning!

This photo of Catocala relicta was Collected by Ed Bruggink at White Lake, Ontario on August 15, 2003 and photographed by Jim des Rivières.

This is one of the images that will be on display at the the G2 Gallery photography exhibit – Moths at LArge by Jim des Rivières.  The show opens on July 9, 2016 in Venice, California, USA.

If you have questions or need more information – click here to contact us.

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Moths of Iowa website – Guest post from Jim Durbin

While the site is primarily for Iowa insects, I have included records for specimens that I have collected while on trips to other states. When you click on a species, you will see a map of Iowa and specimens collected in Iowa will show up. Specimens from other states will show in the list of records. The graphs showing the timing of collecting/documenting show when the dates for the specimen records occur during the months of the year.

In recent years I have begun taking more photographs and collecting fewer specimens. I found that the photographs serve as a document for the specimen and I do not have to collect common species to document. I try to take pictures of the moths that show up on the sheet, crop them to 6 x 6 at 100 dpi, input into the database, label the picture with the specimen number, attach the picture to the specimen record in the database, and then upload the records to the website. I usually load the specimens into the database as moth genus unknown and then go back and identify the specimens, label the picture with the identification, and finally add the identification to the specimen in the database. With the number of specimens that I document in the summer, this allows me to kind of keep up and finish in the fall when I quit collecting. Using this method, I might document 300 specimens a

night but only collect 10 specimens. This method gives a better idea of what is being seen. Also when looking at the records, note the count number. Some records are for month totals and do not reflect individual specimen records. In some cases a species may show up in large numbers and adding a record for each individual does not seem necessary as long as a total count is available.

The site also contains records from 550 others that may be a single record or 10000. I have records from Bamona, Bugguide and Moth Photographer Group.

I also have pages showing how to collect, pin and store specimens.

Getting involved is easier than you think with the recently re-launched National Moth Week Flickr group! (/www.flickr.com/groups/2155416@N22)

In addition to being a popular photo-sharing community, Flickr is widely used by researchers as a source of photo-vouchered biodiversity occurrence data, in the form of records associated with photos. These records are being used in many areas, including biogeography, ecology, invasive species biology, and climate change. This information is also being applied in studies related to food security, control of disease vectors, and marine productivity.

How to get involved

Take pictures of live moths (adults, pupae, caterpillars, and even eggs), light setups, moth-e’rs and event images taken at any time of year.  With iphones and ipads taking high quality images there is no longer any need for specialist cameras and lenses to take good quality photos of moths.

Opening a Flickr account is easy — just choose a user name and start uploading your moth images. Once your images are uploaded to your photostream, join and add your images to a few appropriate “Groups” like National Moth Week for like-minded people to see. The National Moth Week Group has revised its guidelines and you can now post images of live moths (adults, pupae, caterpillars, and eggs), light setups, moth-ers and event images taken at any time of year.

So, please add your images to the National Moth Week Flickr Group. Not only does this showcase your image, but it will allow our partner organizations to “harvest” your image and make the data set that you have created available to a wide range of users. And, after all, isn’t that one of the main points of citizen science?

Adding biodiversity data to you images

Adding names and other data to your image isn’t essential, but it will help researchers find and sort a wide range of images.

Using the common name and/or scientific name (if you know it) for a moth as your image title can help people search Flickr for similar images for comparison and ID purposes. For moths from North America (the continental United States and Canada) using the Hodges number will also help. Adding additional information in the “Description” field such as weather conditions, habitat or specimen behavior will also help researchers.

Tag your image – adding as many relevant tags as you can, will help others find your image.

For this image I would use these tags and putting quotes round any phrases:

Lepidoptera , Moth , Saturniidae , “Punta Gorda” , Toledo , Belize , “Saturniid Moth” , “Rothschildialebeau” , Saturniid , Rothschildia , lebeau , “Royal moth” , “Giant silk moth” , “National Moth Week” , “National Moth Week 2015” (or the year it was taken) , NMW , “NMW 2015” (or the year it was taken)

Geotagging is vitally important for researchers, so please consider taking a few seconds to geotag your image. Once your image is uploaded go to the map and drag your image to a nearby location — whilst some feel comfortable with revealing the precise location where the picture was taken, others prefer to use a more general local landmark.

Machine Tags are another important set of tags that can be added to your image. However, unlike ordinary tags, these can be used by National Moth Week partners such as “Encyclopedia of Life” to “harvest” your image for their records and online database. This is the machine tag I would use for the above image: 

“taxonomy:binomial= Rothschildia lebeau ” 

Please note that there is a space between the genus and species name and that the whole tag is enclosed by quotes. If you would like one of the Group Admins to do this for you just message us via Flickr mail!

Set your images License. For National Moth Week partners to be able to use your image the image must have the following attributes:

1. The image is public.

2. The image is licensed with one of the following licenses:

      – Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)

      – Creative Commons Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC

      – Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA)

      – Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA)

Please do not post any images with “All Rights Reserved” or “NoDeriv (=) creative commons” licenses, by request of our partners. (I usually use the Creative Commons Non-Commercial-Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA) to give partner organizations maximum access to images and data, whilst still retaining copyright).

Please make sure images are tagged, geotagged and ID’d to the best of your ability and, if you would like help with identification, please use “help with ID” (or similar) in the title. If you would like one of the Group Admins to do this for you just message us via Flickr mail, or start a discussion on the National Moth Week Group.

Below is an image taken from a paper written by Vijay Barve (a member of the NMW Science Advisory Board) entitled “Discovering and developing primary biodiversity data from social networking sites: A novel approach” (1) and illustrates just one of the uses of the data submitted on Flickr using the tag “Danausplexippus” The Monarch Butterfly, and how valuable appropriately tagged citizen science records can be.

Map of geo-tagged records of Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) obtained via automated queries on Flickr and GBIF.   Reproduced by kind permission of Vijay Barve.

Written by: Ian Morton, NMW Flickr admin.

(1) Barve, V. 2014. Discovering and developing primary biodiversity data from social networking sites: A novel approach. Ecol. Inform. 24: 194–199.

Questions? click here to contact the National Moth Week team.

People often find it strange that I enjoy studying moths. I mean sure, why care about the butterfly’s “ugly gray brother?” Why stay up until 2 am getting pelted by insects after a long day doing other field work? Because this one of the final frontiers for a naturalist. This is the closest thing I will ever be able to do that’s like what Darwin and Wallace did. The chance and thrill of discovery is what really pushes me. Nearly every time I go out, I see something I’ve never seen before, and it’s all incredibly complexly beautiful, even if it doesn’t appear so.

My undergraduate research project is extremely broad and not much different that what most people do in their backyards. I’m just lucky enough to have a laboratory at Iowa State supporting me. Originally the basis of my work was to complement a much larger butterfly project that is occurring in Ringgold County, Iowa.

Once I actually got out mothing, I started getting all sorts of moths and invertebrates (and one painted turtle and some concerned locals) and this started getting out of hand. You see, mothing on a prairie is so much different that mothing in a wooded area.

When you’re out on the prairie, the sheet will quickly become thickly covered in insects because the lights are visible from so far away. Processing a sheet full of bugs became a major task, especially when you’re including micro-moths.

Given the amount of time that it takes to do, I was forced to just focus on photographing and documenting species I hadn’t seen before, essentially making this a species survey of the area.

While that took a lot of work off my hands, I still have many species come to my lights that I have no idea what they are. My saving grace for a large amount of my identification work has been done by citizen scientists.

My sheet and frame setup is a cheap and simple but a very effective design created by Jim Durbin. The frame is made of metal electrical conduit pipe held up by electric fence posts. It’s really nice because are several ways to hang a sheet.

For power, I use a single 35 AH 12 volt wheelchair battery, which will last me more than a full night. For lighting I run a 4 foot double fixture with blacklight tubes, and a photography bulb which is on a tripod. The freedom of a mobile setup was worth the cost of a battery and charger, especially when many of the sites I moth at are 20 miles from the nearest town.

As far as what I’ve found so far, I think I have uncovered about 200 species, most of which will be new for my county, and a few, first for the state.

I’ve been mothing for three years now, and nearly every night, something comes in that I have never seen before, and it’s absolutely thrilling.

I’ve taken many people mothing with me before, and so many are shocked by the beauty of the moths that claim the night.

I’d really like to thank everyone who’s helped me identify moths, given me advice, and taken the time to ask about my work. The mothing community is great and makes it all the more fun.

Logan is searching for an internship working with or studying Lepidoptera (in the United States or international) next summer and would greatly appreciate any information on potential opportunities.

Today we’ve got a guest post from Ken Childs:

Once a year I like to try to photograph one of every moth species seen during one night of intensive mothing. Since it was National Moth Week and conditions were warm and humid on July 22, I decided that would be the night. July 22 is also my birthday and as a bug geek, I couldn’t think  of a better way to celebrate. Usually my first check of the lights doesn’t produce much but when I’d photographed more than 80 species before  10:15, I knew I’d picked the right night for my count!

During the heat of summer, I generally check my lights at 10:00 P.M., 11:00 P.M., and Midnight. For this project I added one more check at  3:00 A.M. and ended up photographing 212 species of moths.

Here’s my Picasa album documenting the final results. My goal was to try and get a photographic record of each species so many of these moths were not in very good condition  and I didn’t go out of my way to try and get particularly good photos. This is simply a visual record of what I saw during one good night of mothing.  All photos were taken on my farm here in west Tennessee on 7/22/14 and 7/23/14.

Here’s my main sheet and light setup:

The top bulb is a 160w MV and it’s right at the outside edge of a shed that I use for hay storage. The sheet is 5 feet inside the shed so it’s mostly protected from the weather. It’s supported on some thin rope strung across the supports of the shed with a pulley on one side to  adjust the tension. On the front of the sheet are 2 x 40w white black lights and 1 x 15w black light. On the back of the sheet are 2 x 13w  CFL black lights. To the right and behind the sheet is a sheet of cheap plywood paneling with the unfinished side exposed and on that I have  a 13w CFL black light and a 15w tube black light. This shed is actually 2 x 20′ carports put end to end and the sides towards the back are  plywood and some old rusty metal roofing panels with lots of gaps which allows plenty of bug access. The wood and rusted metal make for interesting  backgrounds for many of my photos. It’s surprising just how many moths stay at the fringes of the lighted area. There are species that I  rarely find on the sheet but can be relatively common in the back of this shed.

My main moth photo albums can be found here. The majority of the moth photos were taken within 100 feet of my house here near Henderson, Tennessee. As of this writing, I’ve identified 1267 species of moths on my property and have photographs of another 100 or so species that I  haven’t been able to identify, at least not yet. If you are located in eastern North America, please use these albums as a resource to help identify your  moths. I can’t guarantee all the identifications are correct so if you think you’ve found a match, double check the ID on the Moth Photographers Group and Bug Guide.