National Moth Week event in Turkana, Kenya

Posted by Dino Martins on August 23, 2012
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I recently took part in a fantastic initiative to look at moths around the world. This was part of National Moth Week.

To learn more about National Moth Week and see fabulous pictures of moths from around the world, please visit this site:

http://nationalmothweek.org

To look at moths in Turkana this involved looking at moths (and many events were held around the world). I was in northern Kenya at the Turkana Basin Institute at the time, and it had been fairly dry in the desert so there weren’t as many moths around. Here are a few photos of what we found:

The first step was setting up the light and sheet to attract the moths…

 

Within a minute, the first moth had arrived (I think that it is a member of the Tortricidae Family):

First moth that arrived at the light

 

A few minutes later and there were a lot more insects gathering at the light:

How many insects can you see? (Too many to count!)

 

Several different moths came by for the few hours that we were able to run the light, here are just a few of them:

 

 

More from the world of bugs, soon, including some amazing moths from Western Uganda!

 

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Comments

  1. Ima Ryma
    August 24, 2012, 11:28 am

    Just passing by, I saw the light,
    And sure enough, there full of sheet,
    A mothing mother caught my sight.
    So what the heck, give him a treat.
    I guess I was the first to land.
    “Hi Tortricidae,” he did call,
    A term I did not understand,
    Human give weird names, all in all.
    A National Moth Week there tiz.
    Guess there’s nothing better to do.
    Well, gotta get on with my biz,
    So off into the night I flew.

    We moths talk about, tongue in cheek,
    Having National Human Week.