I've never tried to run a lightsheet before so I've been experimenting with it to attract moths for Moth Week. Before this week, I set up sheets in various locations with UV lights to experiment and see what worked and what didn't. Honestly, I had little to no success in attracting moths although I sure got the mosquitos, beetles, and gnats. The UV lights just didn't seem to attract much and actually, a little worklight that I was using as a flashlight worked better than the UV lights. Go figure.

Last night, I set up a shower curtain liner (plastic but textured) between two beech trees in our yard, about 10 yards away from woods consisting of mixed hardwoods. In front of that, I placed a stand to support two types of UV lights, a flashlight/worklight, and next to it, I placed a grow light that had it's own tripod. The grow light had a USB cable for power so I hooked that up to a portable generator/battery unit. I tried this setup before with minimal (very minimal) success, but the grow light addition did seem to draw more than just beetles.

In desperation, I also took a bottle of very cheap, very sweet local wine (loathsome stuff but I apologize to anyone who likes the stuff and apparently some do because it is very popular locally) and simmered it with a bunch of sugar in it. Then I soaked some rags in the mixture and hung them up next to the sheet at about 9PM. It appears that the moths disagree with me: as soon as I hung up the rags, moths started coming in. Who knew? Sure, they weren't the big gaudy ones, but at least there were a few moths which beat my previous attempts using just the lights.

Most of the moths appeared between 9:30PM and 11:30PM. When I checked sporadically after midnight, basically the same moths were still slurping from the rags and hanging out on the sheet in front of the grow lights. The numbers declined until around 2:30AM when I stopped for the night. Maybe I should have continued until later--I will have to try that in future nights. The plan is to set up every other night during moth week.

On Monday, I'm going to try a different location, perhaps on the lawn next to our pond. I've found Luna Moth wings there (the moth's body most likely eaten by bats) so maybe I'll find some other species in that location. While I've tried running a lightsheet in the swamp along a stream without any success, I may try that location again later in the week, although it is a longer walk (which means I'll probably hang out down there to avoid continually walking back and forth for 1/3 mile to get there). Prestaging a chair and perhaps a shelter of some kind to escape from the insects would make it a lot more convenient so I'll have to see what I can do.

I also plan on using a regular microfiber sheet in other locations so I can leave the shower liner where it is for now. Today, I'm going to fold down each corner of the sheet about an inch and sew it in place so I have little tunnels through which to run rope (or more likely, flagging) to hang the sheet. That will make it a lot easier to string it up securely. While clothespins work, if there is any breeze they have a tendency to work loose so I think having corner pockets through which I can run the string/rope/flagging will work out better. It's all experimentation at this point.

Oh, and so far, the "best" moth I've attracted has been the Hieroglyphic Moth, Diphthera festiva. I'd never seen one before last night and in point of fact, never knew they existed before last night, so that was a fun observation. Since I'm completely new to "mothing" most of the moths are new to me, but that one was so striking that it really caught my attention. I was also intrigued by one of the Armyworm moths--those moths were the ones that were super attracted to the wine/sugar dipped rags and in fact, I had four or five of them at one time around 10:30PM. I think they were Spodoptera dolichos but am not entirely sure as they were also new to me. They were beautiful little moths though with intricate brown and cream patterns on their wings.

I guess that nasty local wine is good for something, anyway.