•-ft*-.^ 





and balmier the weather, the greater the 

 number of moths that would flutter around 

 my porch light. And these numbers paled 

 when compared with the hordes of moths I 

 have seen attracted to lights in the equato- 

 rial jungle. 



I later learned that this owlet moth is 

 one of about fifty species of North Ameri- 

 can moths that are active throughout the 

 winter. Dale D. Schweitzer, an entomolo- 

 gist now with the Nature Conservancy in 

 southern New Jersey, has long studied the 

 Ufe cycles of these winter moths, which 

 are also found in temperate Europe and 



Asia. He has found that they spend the 

 summer as larvae in a state of suspended 

 animation, or estivation — the warm- 

 weather equivalent of hibernation. 



I learned that the best way to catch win- 

 ter moths was to lure them in with sweet 

 bait. From John G. Franklemont, a Cornell 

 University entomologist who is a world 

 authority on winter moths, I learned a sim- 

 ple method: make a concoction of one can 

 of beer, three-quarters of a pound of sugar, 

 some molasses, and a little mashed fruit. 

 (Adding a little brandy is said to help.) In 

 the evening, smear brushfuls of this mix- 



ture on tree trunks. With a little luck, the 

 moths wiU appear within minutes and be- 

 come so bloated on this sweet ambrosia 

 that they cannot fly off and will drop to the 

 ground if disturbed. Maple syrup works 

 equally well. In early spring these moths 

 make a nuisance of themselves when 

 droves of them drown in sap buckets. 



I was elated when I caught my first win- 

 ter moths, and I lost no time trying to find 

 out how "winterized" they were. I put sev- 

 eral of them in a vial of water and froze it 

 into a block of ice in the freezer compart- 

 ment of the refrigerator. A little while 



44 Natural History 2/94 



