This post is the second in a special series by Backyard Butterflies co-founder and Executive Director, Lior S. Carlson.
Here on the Outer Banks, where the ocean is never far — let us allure you, like a siren’s song, to come and experience something genuinely strange and beautiful in its own unassuming way.
Imagine standing in the dark, watching creatures drift in from the night that look like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Things so odd and intricate and alive that you couldn’t have conjured them in your imagination. A small, secret world that has been running every night for millions of years — just outside your window, just beyond the porch light — unremarked upon and waiting to be witnessed.
And here you are on the Outer Banks, just a few miles away from all of it.
You probably came for the ocean, and it’s beautiful — no argument there. But honestly, watching those waves slide back and forth gets monotonous quickly, like watching grass grow. And somehow, despite coming all this way to escape big city life, most people end up gathered around the same things they left behind: restaurants, bars, and shops — just with a nautical theme slapped on for good measure.
We’re offering you something different. Something you won’t find back home, and won’t find on the main strip either. A moth night is an intimate experience with the land that touches the sea — the scrub, the marsh, the maritime forest quietly lurking at the edge of the dunes — and all the strange, unique, mysterious life that moves through it after dark.
If you’ve grown weary of what King Neptune has to offer, tired of swilling grog like a pirate, looking for a low-cost activity, or just plain curious — all you need to do is, as they say, come as you are.
What we’re inviting you to is a moth night.
A moth night is exactly what it sounds like: you gather after dark around a special light source, and you watch what comes in. No expertise required. No equipment beyond your phone. Just you, the dark, and whatever decides to show up — and trust us, things will show up. Strange things. Beautiful things. Things that will make you question everything you thought you knew about what lives outside your window after dark.
In our first post, we covered the basics: what moths are, why they matter, and why a growing community of citizen scientists spends their nights standing around glowing white sheets in the dark. If you missed it, it’s worth a read. But if you’re ready to skip straight to what actually happens when you show up — read on.
Step Up to the Sheet
You stand around the collecting sheet and scan. Slowly. Deliberately. You pause here and there to crouch down and take a photo.
And quickly you realize it’s not just moths. Caddisflies, mayflies, stoneflies, and Dobsonflies drift in. Wasps arrive. Beetles — so many beetles, each one crunchier and more armored than the last. Then the treehoppers and leafhoppers appear, some of which look like what you’d get if a pug and a cicada somehow had offspring. Mantidflies show up and promptly begin eating everything in sight. A wolf spider carrying her entire clutch of babies on her back might amble through.
And through all of it, you stand there watching. Taking photos. Observing the drama and spectacle of insects simply going about their business.
As citizen scientists, we become witnesses to a small nighttime world that has been running, uninterrupted and unremarked upon, every night for millions of years. Somehow it never gets old. It only gets more inspiring.
When you’ve photographed everything on one side of the sheet, you circle to the other side and start fresh. Every new section reveals either a familiar species or something so odd and beautiful and intricate that you couldn’t have conjured it in your imagination. Then you walk to the next collecting sheet, a few yards away, and begin again.
Your Moment of Science
A moth night is an intentional activity: you turn on a special light source to attract moths, then stand there and take it all in.
It’s thought that moths navigate by moonlight, which is why they’re drawn to sources of UV light as well as blue and green wavelengths — but not to yellow, orange, or red. Not all moths respond to the same wavelengths, either. Some have a preference for certain bands of UV light, while others aren’t quite so finicky. And some moths won’t come to lights at all; those can only be coaxed out using bait or pheromones. As for why moths land and stay put on the sheet once they arrive, it’s thought they’re disoriented. A moth night is technically called “light trapping” — which is just a science-y way of saying they’re like deer caught in headlights.
A question that comes up often: does light trapping hurt them? After all, it does temporarily pull them away from feeding and finding a mate. Light trapping itself doesn’t cause harm. Bucket trapping, on the other hand, can and does — moths can become trapped and perish. Bucket traps have legitimate applications in professional surveying contexts, but for public moth nights, and for my love of moths, I use lights with collecting sheets only and release the moths at the end of the survey.
So we put out special lights to attract moths so we can commune with them and survey them. But why survey them? Are they truly that important? I think all creatures, even the least of them, deserve love and attention. Moths can be quite “least” — especially the micro moths. And yet they are spectacular. Intricate. So wildly diverse that they scratch a particular itch that very few other groups of insects can.
What’s remarkable is how much is still left to learn. Much of North Carolina remains under-reported, particularly in rural and agricultural counties. The counties where professional entomologists happen to live tend to be well-surveyed; everywhere else, the data is thin. That’s where citizen scientists come in. Thanks to iNaturalist, backyard surveys have become remarkably accessible. All you need is the equipment — and on a peak summer night you could be uploading dozens to a hundred or more observations from your own yard.
The Equipment: How Deep Do You Want to Go?
Like any hobby, mothing has levels of commitment and cost.
Before LED lights came along, mothing was a heavier undertaking, literally. The standard setup used mercury vapor bulbs with high-wattage ballasts. Why mercury vapor? There’s something special about the quality of light they produce — a rich bluish-green glow with UV wavelengths woven in. Absolute moth crack. The catch is that these lights require heavy ballasts and need to be powered by a traditional outlet, a generator, or a car battery. Analog, bulky, and not exactly backpack-friendly.
At the entry level, you need almost nothing. A simple LED porch light will get you started with zero investment. Download the iNaturalist app on your phone and you’re already conducting your first moth night. Seriously, you are just a few actionable steps away from doing this tonight!
When you’re ready to level up, the Entoquip mini is a solid introductory UV light. It tends to attract a broad range of nocturnal insects, not just moths, but it has its merits and it’s a good way to get a feel for light trapping.
That’s where modern technology stepped in. Mothing has gone fully 21st century with the LepiLED, an LED light specifically designed for moth surveys, developed by Dr. Gunnar Brehm in Germany. A LepiLED fits in the palm of your hand and runs off a standard phone-charging battery bank. The entire setup tucks into a backpack pocket. The mini LepiLED runs around $350, which is reasonable for what it does.
For those who still want the classic mercury vapor experience, there’s a vendor on eBay currently selling complete setups — bulb, ballast, and tripod — also around $350. Mercury vapor bulbs are being phased out in favor of LEDs and less toxic alternatives, so these are becoming harder to find, but the option is still out there. The trick is finding the actual mercury vapor bulbs at a reasonable price.
At the 2nd Annual Moth Night at the Museum, I’ll be running a combination of LepiLEDs and Entoquip lights. I don’t travel with my mercury vapor setup since it’s not portable enough for most events. I do bring them out of “moth balls” for specific occasions: the Hillsborough Moth Crawl, and certain NCUCMP survey sites where I want multiple light sources to maximize coverage.
Identification: That Comes Later
When you’re standing at the sheet, identification is the farthest thing from your mind. What you’re doing instead is recognizing — and there’s an important difference. The objective is to photograph everything. Literally everything that is a moth, and everything else that looks interesting, because that strange beetle next to the Rosy Maple moth is one you’ve never seen before and it absolutely counts as a new observation on iNaturalist. But getting back to the task at hand.
Recognition is the goal because you want to photograph everything without photographing the same thing a dozen times. Over time you’ll start to recognize enough species on sight that you won’t keep returning to the same individual. What’s freeing about this is that you don’t actually need to know the names of what you’re photographing. You just have to recognize what makes something a distinct species, or even simply “a moth.”
For a long time, what kept me from mothing was the assumption that I had to arrive already knowing things. That identification happened in real time, at the sheet, right this second — and my brain doesn’t work that way. What I’ve learned is that yes, there are people who naturally click with scientific names, and that’s genuinely admirable. I struggle with them, not because they’re hard to pronounce or spell, but because I encounter many species so infrequently that my already chock-full brain looks at a new name and thinks: how exactly am I going to learn Microcrambus elegans when I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast by the time I get to dinner? The names come gradually, with repetition and time. And in the meantime, iNaturalist handles the heavy lifting.
Moth-er Etiquette
A moth night is a shared experience, and a few simple courtesies go a long way.
Stay aware of your surroundings at all times. Watch for tripod legs, backdrop frame supports, and extension cords — they have a way of appearing exactly where you’re about to step.
When photographing in a crowd, get your shot and step aside so others can move in. It can be awkward to share space around a sheet, especially when you’re trying to contort yourself to reach a moth in the bottom corner, but the rotation works best when everyone keeps moving. You’ll also notice that people tend to cluster at one sheet while another goes nearly unobserved — but a quiet sheet isn’t an empty one. Moths and observers both circulate through the sheets in a loose, wave-like rhythm through the night. It’s a surprisingly natural synchrony between the insects and the people watching them.
And yes, it is tempting to show up in a full Mothman costume with a six-foot wingspan. Save that for your moonlit rendezvous with Mothman, or The Hillsborough Moth Crawl.
What to Bring and Wear
Now that you know what to expect, here’s how to show up.
Bring a flashlight or headlamp — you’ll need it for navigating between sheets in the dark and for getting a closer look at whatever catches your eye. Your cell phone camera is perfectly sufficient for photographing moths, though a DSLR will give you more control if you have one. Pack insect repellent and sunscreen, since UV lights are in use and the bugs will absolutely find you before you find them. Bring non-alcoholic beverages and snacks — moth nights run late, and a well-fed moth-er is a happy moth-er.
As for what to wear: long pants, close-toed shoes, and a snug-fitting shirt are strongly recommended. In summer, small flying insects will find their way into your ears and nose, and if you stand open-mouthed in front of a LepiLED long enough, you will eat a few bugs. Consider this a rite of passage.
Coming Up Next
In our next post, we’ll be talking cameras — what to bring to a moth night, how to photograph moths on the sheet, and how to get the best results whether you’re shooting on a cell phone or a DSLR. If you’ve ever wondered how people capture those stunning close-up shots of moths at rest, that post is for you. Stay tuned.
We sang our siren’s song, and somewhere out there Mothman is already on his way. We hope we’ve allured you into joining him. All that’s left is for you to come and see it for yourself.