Last Saturday night (July 22nd), we finally set up to attract and observe moths at night. We were pretty inspired by our experiences at Mothapalooza in 2022. It is a two-day event hosted by the Arc of Appalachia with speakers, field trips, and moth observations at several sites in the evening. The observation set ups are bright mercury vapor lamps and black light lamps (the wavelengths attractive to moths) and a sheet hung near the lights where moths can land. We tried to set-up something similar on our patio by the sliding doors.

By the time we packed in for the night at midnight we had observed 18 different species of moth (plus a variety of other insects). We did not see any of the larger moths like Io’s or Cecropia moths, but we think it was a pretty good success for our first time doing this.