Aug. 30 Column: Backyard Mothing

And now for something completely different! For my garden column today, I decided to write about my new hobby of backyard mothing. Chances are, you’ve never heard of this before. If it makes you feel any better, I hadn’t either up until a few months ago. You can read about it in The Spokesman-Review: Susan Mulvihill gets trapped by new hobby – mothing. (or you can read the text of my column underneath the video below)

So what is backyard mothing anyway? It involves trapping moths at night by attracting them to a light with a simple trap underneath it. Then you carefully examine and/or photograph them. Best of all, you release them back into the environment.

I first heard about this from a good friend of ours who also happens to be an amazing nature photographer. And it turned out he learned how to catch them from Carl Barrentine Ph.D. He’s a retired professor who is fascinated by the hundreds of different moths found here in the Inland Northwest.

There’s a reason I’ve been so interested in moths lately. A few of them are the adult stage of some damaging vegetable garden pests. Specifically, the dingy cutworm moth, corn earnworm moth and five-spotted hawk moth (the parent of those pesky tomato hornworms). The photos are for my new book, The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, from Cool Springs Press. You can pre-order it on Amazon.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading about this. You’ll be happy to hear that backyard mothing is the topic of this week’s video as well. I felt you really needed to see how to set up a trap, how to handle the moths, and so on. You’ll find a slideshow of some of the moth photos I’ve taken so far. I hope you’ll enjoy it:

Backyard Mothing column:

by Susan Mulvihill

Would you like to take up a new hobby that is fun, educational, and can be done in your yard ? It doesn’t require expensive equipment either. I’m talking about backyard mothing and it’s probably unlike any other hobby you’ve ever undertaken.

Mothing involves setting up a simple trap near a light in the evening to capture moths. The majority of them are nocturnal. In the morning, you carefully place the moths into small containers. Then you cool them down in the refrigerator and remove them later to photograph them. The last step is to release them back into the environment.

I first heard about mothing from a photographer friend who started taking photos of these amazing creatures this year. He learned how to catch them from Carl Barrentine, Ph.D. He’s a retired professor who got into mothing about 10 years ago.

“In 2009, there was a man creating videos of the insects he found at a wildlife refuge in the Midwest. He then posted them on YouTube,” Barrentine explained. “Those inspired me. I started photographing the moths that were showing up in my yard and discovered how difficult they are to identify.”

If you think there are just a few moths in the Pacific Northwest, you’re in for a surprise. There are as many as 3,000 distinct moth species. Barrentine moved to Spokane three years ago. He’s on track to document the nearly 700 species he has found in his back yard since then.

This summer, he created a series of mothing videos in celebration of National Moth Week. These educational, enjoyable videos cover the basics of setting up a moth trap. You’ll learn how to handle them and discover great resources to help with their identification. Refer to the information box for a link to his videos as well as other good references.

I was able to build my own moth trap with some easy-to-acquire items. A collapsible mesh clothes hamper for $6, a black CFL lightbulb for $10, and several empty egg cartons. I also needed some 2-ounce plastic mini cups with lids for temporarily holding the moths I want to photograph. The egg cartons provide moths with a place to hide once they’re in the trap.

Here is the basic set-up: Place the egg cartons in the bottom of the hamper. Replace a porch lightbulb with the black light and hang the hamper just below it. Turn on the light at dusk. In the morning, check the trap early while it’s still cool. Sort through the egg cartons to see what you’ve caught.

Place each moth you want to photograph into a plastic mini cup and snap on the lid. Remember they are quite fragile. It’s possible to avoid handling them directly if you’re careful. Don’t worry, they don’t bite. Set them into your refrigerator to cool them down. This makes them sluggish so they’ll sit still for their photo shoot. Afterwards, release them outside.

Barrentine waits until the cool morning hours of the next day and places each moth individually on a small board. He rotates it as needed to frame the moth in his camera’s viewfinder. He prefers photographing them in natural light. His camera of choice is a Pentax WG-3. It’s possible to get clear photos with a cell phone as well.

Identifying moths is the challenging part so be sure to take advantage of the helpful resources he has suggested.

“You don’t need to know what you’ve got, you just need a good photograph of the moth,” Barrentine said. “It’s also helpful to take photos from different perspectives. Someone can help you identify it. There are websites filled with people who are willing to help you.”

In the Inland Northwest, moth season runs from early March to about mid-November. Different types of moths are active during the spring, summer and fall months. They can tolerate hard frosts but not snow cover.

I’ve certainly become hooked on mothing and it’s clear Barrentine thrives on it.

“It’s important to keep intellectually fit as you age. Mothing keeps me sharp,” he said. “It’s really hard to learn your moths but it’s so rewarding, too. You feel like Charles Darwin stepping off the Beagle. Because every morning you go out, you find new creatures you never knew existed.”

Moth Resources

• Carl Barrentine’s video series on mothing
• Facebook moth groups: Mothing and Moth-watching, Butterflies and Moths of the Pacific Northwest, and Moths of North America. Find these and other moth-related groups by doing a search on the word “moth” on Facebook.
• Leps by Fieldguide cell phone app. Take a photo of a moth with your phone, upload it and see if you get a match.
• BugGuide
• iNaturalist.org
• Pacific Northwest Moths
• Field guide: “Pacific Northwest Insects” by Merrill A. Peterson (Seattle Audubon Society, 2018)