There are a lot of great resources for help with identifying and learning about moths. This a list of sites and resources I personally rely on the most.
Websites
iNaturalist [app & website]
A wonderful citizen science website for tracking any form of life, not just moths. Anyone’s welcome to sign up and upload their own sightings and it provides a predictive algorithm for species identification which is hugely helpful. The navigation and searching is powerful and intuitive and the whole philosophy of allowing content from anyone is tremendously useful for the sheer volume of data you find. There are also free iPhone + Android apps for identifying things in the field. Because it’s citizen science based, the people who chime in your observations may or may not know what the heck they’re talking about, but over time the identifications get more accurate.
bugguide.net
An older site than iNat with difficult navigation, but it contains a trove of observations and information. Well worth spending the time to get acquainted with it, but keep in mind it requires more effort than the other sites here. You can upload your observations, but unlike iNat it’s curated by experts and they “frass” (delete) any observation they don’t think adds anything new to the existing database. In the past I’ve found it a better resource for a lot of lesser known species than iNat, but iNat has come a long way and it’s attracting more and more experts.
Pacific Northwest Moths
A wonderful resource website for several key macromoth families of our region. Astonishingly detailed. The descriptions are pretty technical, but the site does really well at trying to explain it as clearly as possible. But I won’t fib: I’ve read, re-read-, re-re-read descriptions of certain species over the years to try to fully internalize and understand the information, and I know I’ll do it many time over.
Moth Photographers Group
Another great site. A bit old but well worth the time looking around. Generally I favour the other sites listed here and only go when I want more information. I need to check this out more often.
BC Lepidopterists’ Guild
Dave Holden put together a really terrific resource here for BC leppers. (“Leppers”? Sounds awfully like we have leprosy). Well worth checking out, there’s some great stuff here.
Checklists
These are lists of species found in a region. They’re useful to filter out all the noise and let you know what you’re most likely to see. These are free to download.
Checklist of the Lepidoptera of BC, 2015
This was my go-to checklist for years since it’s BC-specific. But it’s gotten a bit dated now and the next checklist is more up to date, even if it means wading through unwanted information.
Annotated Checklist of the Moths and Butterflies (Lepidoptera) of Canada and Alaska, 2018
This lists all Canadian species with a breakdown by province.
Gear
Solida
Good resource for pheromone traps and equipment.
Bugdorm
I can’t vouch for this site, having never ordered anything from them yet. But it has some interesting traps and rearing equipment listed.
BC Moths 