This summer I picked up some Lepidoptera spreading equipment from Atelier Jean Paquet so I could start building up my own collection. Dave Holden of the BC Leps had been kind enough to show me his collection, give me an intro to pinning, and even provided a few pinned + non-pinned specimens to get my collection started. That’s one nice dude.

But now I should admit the glaring disconnect: I don’t “collect” (kill) the insects I see, and currently have no plan to. So why learn to pin?

Let’s start with the not-collecting bit. One of the pleasures of being out in nature is knowing that I’m not making it any worse. The idea of bonking something off just for intellectual gain or satisfying some sort of chronic hoarding behaviour strikes me as abhorrent. Nature has to deal with enough already. I have no intellectual objections to other people collecting, and the reasons for doing so strike me as absolutely legitimate, but personally I find it a tough leap to make. Yet, ultimately: having a collection is far and away the best way to learn about the moths, and I want to take this to the next level. You can learn a great deal from photographs, but a great deal more from actual specimens.

So for the near future while I learn the ropes of pinning, I’ll be mooching off my fellow moth-ers to take their leftovers. At some point I’ll probably have to re-examine my views, but not yet.

Anyway, I pinned a few moth this last weekend, beginning with a Pale Beauty, Campaea perlata (the photo above is of one I spotted in Aug 2022). Pretty moth, very common around here from May to October. After a lot of cursing I succeeded in the end – and learned a great deal in the process. My key takeaway is that boy do I ever have big, fat, dumb fingers.

Next time will be better.