Our resident moth nerd, Tom Shields shares below about how he made his moth trap.
Have you ever wanted to try moth trapping but don’t want to fork out hundreds of pounds to buy a ready made set up? (Very reasonably priced and high quality traps are available!)
Why not try the budget Moth-trappers option and build your own? It’s fairly easy to build but care is needed in cutting the materials and setting up the basic electrics. There are numerous designs available online with good instructions, links below!
Materials
• Plastic storage box (any size will do but I use a 35l ‘really useful box’)
• Plastic funnel
• Corrugated plastic or perspex
• Lightbulb
• Lamp/light holder fittings
• 3 core cable
• 3 pin electrical plug
• Screws
• Eggboxes
This is a design that I’ve seen used quite widely now. I made my first in 2012 and made another in 2019 so I could use two in a woodland, which ran off car batteries. The latter one is still going strong and catches good numbers of moths throughout the year.
The trap runs off mains electric and the basic design is a light to attract moths (I use a Wemlite 20w blacklight), a funnel and baffles to direct the moths into the catching box, and egg boxes for the moths to settle in.
This is low cost, and easy to make and will catch moths in any garden. I don’t catch huge numbers but in the peak of the season I can get 100-200 moths in a night. I’ve taken it in holiday to various places and had some impressive catches including over 600 moths on the east coast in Norfolk!
So give it a go, have a look at mine and research some other options online, and get discovering the moths that fly in your garden overnight! And the bonus is that you can send your records to your local moth recorder and the data will be used as part of the national picture of moths in the UK!
