Walking through Helyar Woods on a July Monday night, 17 OWLers were caught up in the enthusiasm and excitement of mothing after dark. Using a minimum amount of light, we traced the path of trees on which Tony McBride had painted a bait of beer, bananas and brown sugar. We searched each one in the hopes of seeing some of the specimens he had talked about earlier in the evening at the Holly House. Brief scans with our flashlights revealed an assortment of daddy longlegs, camel crickets, a wooly bear caterpillar, several female gypsy moths laying their eggs within a tan cottony mesh, and a sphinx moth feeding with its proboscis (a long feeding tube).

The highlight of our search was Cathy's discovery of a moth clinging to a mailbox that, oddly enough, was positioned at the edge of Helyar Woods. On close examination, Tony identified it as a newly hatched copper underwing whose still-soft wings were drying out and at the same time being pumped with fluid in preparation for flight.

.We capped off our search by inspecting a large white sheet that Tony had earlier stretched on a frame and illuminated with a mercury vapor light. Among other insects, we found beetles, a horned wasp, inchworm moths, sphinx moths and a noctua pronuba (a large yellow underwing native to Europe). As Tony explained, various moths would appear at different times throughout the night.

Tony said moths and butterflies are of the order Lepidoptera (derived from the Greek meaning scale wing). The powder left on your hands after handling a moth is actually the microscopic scales, which make up much of the wing and have been rubbed off. These overlapping scales give the insect its color and protection.

Butterflies and moths have three body parts and three pairs of legs. The body of a moth is usually heavy and furry while the butterfly is slender. A moth's antennae are either feathery (to attract mates) or hairy with wispy tips; in contrast the butterfly's antennae are usually clubbed or knobby on the ends. Moths fly in the daytime and at night; however butterflies are day fliers. The number of moth species is around 11,000 in North America, over 5 times that of the butterfly.

Moths go through a 4-stage metamorphosis: from egg, to caterpillar or larva, to pupa to the adult. During the larva stage a moth will molt as many a four or five times. It is at this stage that some moths do the most damage. A colony of about 100 Eastern tent caterpillars will spin a nest of silk on a black cherry tree where they feed at night, the caterpillar of the Pandora sphinx moth can be destructive to grapevines, and the gypsy moth of the tussock family can strip a tree of most of its leaves in one season. (Tony related how the gypsy moth was brought here in the 1800s from Europe on the erroneous assumption that it could produce enough silk to make it a viable business.) And many of us have discovered the holes in clothing resulting from moth infestation when taking it out of storage

Some moths have cryptic coloration to avoid or thwart predators: the polyphemus and Io moth have large eye spots on their lower wings, the promethean moth has eyespots on its forewings, and the underwings of the Owlet family will lift up their forewings to reveal an orange/black coloration intended to scare birds. The sphinx moth caterpillar will rear up and assume a sphinx-like pose in a threatening situation and the caterpillars of the smaller paresa and fen buck moths have stinging spines. Birds avoid tiger moths because they do not taste good.

Although moths are generally thought of being dull-colored many do not fit that description. The tiger moths are bright colored and patterned, the rosy maple moth is colored in a two-tone pattern of fuchsia and yellow and the luna moth is a beauty with its lime green coloring and elegant shape.

All moths are attracted to each other for breeding purposes in the same way. Out of her ovipositor, the female will emit pheromones (chemicals) that are carried on the breezes for up to 20 miles away. A male of her own species will pick up on this "message" and make his way to her. After having mated, the female will lay her eggs and die soon afterward. The time of day in which the female "calls" (attracts) the male varies from species to species.

All during his slide presentation, a soft rattle could be heard inside the paper grocery bag Tony had placed on the table at the front of the room. Inside, a female cecropia moth was fluttering around and laying her eggs.

At the end of his talk, Tony transferred the moth to a container and cut up the bag in order to portion out the eggs to those who were interested in raising them to maturity. He suggested putting the eggs on a leaf inside a container and replenishing the foliage daily after the eggs had hatched. In about a month's time it will spin a cocoon around itself in the container. The cocoon can be left outside during the cold months and after bringing it inside in early May, one could expect the moth to emerge.