Mothley Crew

My very good friend Rob, fellow bigMouth chorister, cabinet maker, luthier, painter, photographer, and, as it turns out, amateur lepidopterist built himself a moth trap back in the mid-2000s to entertain his children. You set the trap up to do its job overnight. It is basically a sealed wooden box with a big funnel and a lamp. At night, the flying creatures are attracted to the lamp, find themselves perambulating down the funnel and into the box, which is lined with cardboard egg cartons. There they will happily stay until dawn, when the amateur lepidopterist will pay a visit to see what lurks within, setting them all free again after a few observations are made and photos taken. You can see some of the snaps I took at Rob’s early this morning in a Facebook gallery entitle Mothley Crew, hopefully I will have more species to display tomorrow. I paid Rob a visit early this morning, by invitation, to see the what kind of haul he might have had on a sultry July night. Daytime temperatures have been 30 degrees Celsius plus and nothing lower than about 25 at night. There were plenty of flies and beetles in the trap and no smaller number of moths. Moths of all sizes from tiny little specimens, through White and Buff Ermines, and Yellow Underwings 20 millimetres or so from antennae to tail, and at least one much bigger Poplar Hawk Moth. I snapped a few close-ups with my phone camera while Rob set them free into his garden shrubberies to fly another night or be snaffled up by ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs