The Moth Trap: How I came to see the lepidopteral light

Regular Sciencebase readers will know only too well that back in July 2018 I got hooked on moths. An enthusiastic friend lent me a moth trap he had built himself for his children many years ago. The trap is basically a wooden box with a plastic funnel and an ultraviolet light supported by stiff plastic vanes). Moth trap The UV light attracts the night-flying creatures, some of them bump into the vanes, drop into the funnel and then find a cozy corner in one of the empty egg cartons put inside the box before “lighting up”. The amateur, or indeed professional, lepidopterist examines the catch at dawn, recording species and species number and later releasing the moths off-site back into undergrowth or bushes. It’s fascinating and fun and at the time of writing almost five years since I first “lit up”, I have seen, photographed, and logged well over 450 different species of moth in my Cambridgeshire garden. The variety and diversity of shape, size, colouration, and patterning is incredible. I must admit that I had always been a little irrationally wary of moths despite the fact that they are completely harmless. After all, unlike many other types of insect, they don’t bite and they don’t sting. Poplar Hawk-moth on Rob’s hand on that fateful day in 2018 It was a test run with my moth-trap maker friend, Rob, who had stopped trapping moth and turned his hand to making guitars, that got me hooked. He lit up one July evening and invited ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs