The photo above is of a Lithophane amanda (Amanda’s pinion moth), taken this morning. These are flagged as Vulnerable in BC by NatureServe, and the first time I’ve gotten one on the west side of Bowen Island.

Lots of miscellaneous moth-related news! Let’s start with…

UK Trip

I just got back from week in the UK. It was really just a vacation with the wife, but to give the trip an official purpose, I attended a tech conference while I was there. I used to regularly attend conferences but since COVID it dwindled, so it was fun to get back in the swing of things. I brought a single light trap in case I found a discrete location in the heart of London and Edinburgh, but to no great surprise I couldn’t. No matter. One day I hope I’ll get the opportunity to do some British mothing.

Home reno

Now I’m home I’ve resumed work on the Moth Gallows. Ok, perhaps this requires a bit of backstory… Our septic system was being crushed by the roots of a huge douglas fir, so the last couple of years we’ve had to contend with wastewater getting backed up in the house when it froze (not fun to deal with, let me tell you!). Rather than chop the tree down, I rented a jackhammer and excavated a new path for the pipe through the bedrock, right over my favoured spot to set up my moth nets. I’m now the process of building a boardwalk over the area which’ll lead to a raised platform with a permanent fixture to hang a net. We’ve named it the Moth Gallows because it sounds comically sinister – and hey, it’ll look like a gallows. Conceivably, depending on how things go, I’ll even turn it into a Mothzebo (a gazebo for moths, in case you can’t make that leap) so I can set up light traps regardless of the weather. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Checklist Manager tool

After putting it on hold for a few weeks, I’m now back working on a UI tool for managing the BC Lepidoptera curated checklist. I’ve spoken about this in previous posts, but the basic idea is that it uses iNat data to generate a complete checklist of all moth species in the province, only curated by certain experts to ensure the list is accurate. The complexity of the script grew and grew, so I decided to put it all into an interface to make it simpler for the curators to manage.

Here’s an early screenshot of the Baseline Species page, which allows curators to extend the list of known lep species beyond what has actually been sighted on iNat.

Mothing at Cape Roger Curtis

Cape Roger Curtis is a large block of land on the west side of Bowen Island, where I live. Last year the Bowen Island Conservancy bought the land from Metro Vancouver, so I met up with their Technical Advisory Group to explain my purpose and request continued access to their lands. I’m happy to say they acquiesced, so last night I set up some traps. A few findings:

Other than the Lithophane amanda (Amanda’s pinion), there wasn’t anything terribly exciting, but I did pick up a few FOY’s (First of the Year). Speaking of which, emptying moth traps is a terrific way to work on your ear birding! This morning I heard my first Hammond’s flycatcher and Caspian terns of the year, plus a boatload of Black-throated grey and Yellow-rumped warblers, Western flycatcher, red crossbill and more. Boy I missed the warm weather.