National Moth Week, #MothWeek2025, is a celebration and opportunity to contribute to a global citizen science project focused on primarily nocturnal creatures that flit and flitter through our backyards, local parks, woodlands, and wildlands under the cover of darkness. Fascinating yet often misunderstood, moths evolved over 200 million years ago from butterfly-like insects. With over 12,000 individual species in North America, moths are far more prevalent than their more colorful relatives, the butterflies.
Because most moths are nocturnal, they are easy to overlook. They range in size (wingtip to wingtip) from about 1/6th of an inch wide (4mm) to about 12 inches wide (30 cm). Some are agricultural pests, while others are important pollinators; many are important food resources for birds.If you’re new to mothing, you can learn a lot about “Porch Light Biology” by watching the Mothing School videos with Dr. Carl Barrentine on the National Moth Week website or YouTube. His very informative and fun videos guide participants through how to set up a mothing station in the backyard, or elsewhere, and how to go about photographing or collecting moths. Barrentine, who lives in Spokane, Washington, has found over 500 species of moths in his backyard! “Once a person gets looking, there are a lot of moths in their backyard,” said Barrentine in a video he did for Moth Week 2022.
Night-flying moths are attracted to porch lights, black lights, or more intense mercury vapor lights. Hang an old white sheet near these lights (best to have the light pointed at the sheet) and patiently wait for the moths to land. Then, it’s lights, camera, action!
Barrentine recommends a digital camera or good phone camera for close-up photos of the moths that land on the sheet. Include a small flashlight to provide extra lighting which helps reduce some of the shadows and makes sure the moth is well lit and clear to view. You can then upload the images to one of several different apps such as iNaturalist, PNW Moths, or Project Noah. Bug Guide and Moth Photographers Group are two additional excellent resources to learn about moths and to submit images for identification.
If you don’t have a way to hang a sheet in the yard, but do have a tree or board, use some of Dave’s not-so-secret moth bait to attract these creatures. The recipe calls for mashed overripe bananas mixed with a little brown sugar or syrup and a bit of beer or wine (parental involvement recommended!) and let the mixture ferment for a couple of days before spreading it on a tree or board about an hour before dusk.
You could even create your own DIY Moth Trap which live-traps moths and allows for looking at moths the following day in the daylight before releasing them.
Even if you’re not watching moths for science, they are charismatic creatures. “There’s nothing better than a glass of wine on a cool summer evening waiting for the desert primrose, Oenothera caespitosa, to bloom, only to be rewarded by a visit from the sphinx moth,” said Yvonne Babb, owner of Your Garden Companion. “Life is richer when our yards are rich with native plants.” And pollinators.
The High Desert Museum has an exhibit to educate visitors about critters in the night. “Our Forest at Night experience, a long-term installation that’s inside The Changing Forest building, explores the adaptations of animals and plants that rely on darkness and includes a white-lined sphinx moth,” said Heidi Hagemeier, HDM’s director of communications and visitor experience.
National Moth Week participants can register their private or public events on the organization’s website. Maybe consider hosting some friends or neighbors to get to know these cool creatures that cruise our neighborhoods at night and let #National Moth Week shine a little light on them.
National Moth Week
July 19-27
This article appears in Source Weekly July 17, 2025.
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