Caterpillars and Moths at Night

One night this week I set up the sheet and lights for mothing. I also went looking for caterpillars at night with the aid of a blacklight flashlight. Erin, our adult daughter, came over and joined me. She confessed that she only planned on staying 30 minutes but she got caught up in the treasure hunt for two hours! Trying to spy things in the dark with a flashlight is addicting…

Caterpillars in the Dark

Using a blacklight to search for caterpillars is something we learned at a Midwest Native Plant Society Fall Safari in September of 2021. Caterpillars are very good at hiding… their lives depend on it! It turns out that some caterpillars have a tendency to shine/glow under blacklight, which makes them much easier to find. Once located, I take a photo and check them out the next day (often they are in or near the same spot on the plant).

Just for reference, here is the blacklight flashlights we have but there are a lot of them out there.

When photographing caterpillars at night, I am using my usual macro lens and a flash specifically made for macro work (two lights at the end of the lens with one on each side). This model lets me turn on the lights at various intensities so I can see what I am focusing on. My shutter speed is usually 1/200 and the aperture is in the f/11 to f/16 range. This combination lights the subject but leaves the rest of the image dark which results in a nicely highlighted subject. Thanks to Jim McCormac for this tip!

So the process is: (a) find the subject with the black light, (b) turn on the flash’s continual led light, (c) remove blacklighting, (d) focus, (e) shoot. The flash sensor will take care of a proper flash level with the continual light left on.

Here are some caterpillars (plus a walking stick) we found at night…

Portrait Gallery

Landscape Gallery

Mothing Night II

I blogged about our first night of attracting moths with a lighted sheet on July 24, 2023. That night we set up close to the house on the patio. This time we set up near the back third of the property so we were closer to large planting and trees.

A nice result of the night was seeing the adult moth of caterpillars I had photographed two years ago (also in September). I do not always get photos of both stages of development. Here is the Red-fringed Emerald moth, you may recognize the caterpillar from my post about deception in the garden.