We had a great moth party this year.  (Celebrating National Moth Week.)  The weather forecast was for thunderstorms, but just before people arrived the skies cleared, and just before dusk the wind died down.  A perfect moth night.

Photo by Wendy Johnson

One of the problems we always have at the moth party is that some of the moths are difficult to appreciate.   Many of them are small, so it’s hard to see their intricate patterns.  This time we tried projecting the photos of the moths onto a screen to make them easier to see.  In the picture, Mike is sitting at his computer, cropping photos as I take them, and putting them up on the screen.   Click here to see details of how we did it.

Here are all the species we saw, with common names.   Click on any photo to see a larger version.  (If you want to see the scientific name, look at the url of the photo.)

I added one photo of something we didn’t see – a Giant Leopard Moth – the adult of the caterpillar we saw.  The caterpillar will hide in a protected place for the winter, then eat a little more in the spring, pupate, and emerge as an adult next June.

One species we saw was a new one for me – Banded Olethreutes (Olethreutes fasciatana) – one of the tiny ones.

Here are all the moths – 39 species!