Damn frogs, toads, lizards too....

[vabrou]

Always a battle with the reptiles and amphibians at my clearwing moth traps. Relocating them is an exercise in futility. They return the next day on the same traps or on neighboring traps. The ones that fall in do me a favor; they won't be eating any more moths. All photos here at my home in Louisiana. I ran these semiochemical clearwing moth traps for the past 45 years, using NaCn as the dispatching agent.

[jhyatt]

Never had that problem here in the southern Appalachians, but more than once I've left a moth sheet running all night, only to find in the early morning that all the moths were gone from the lower 12-18" of the sheet... and a pile of raccoon poop nearby!
jh

[vabrou]

John, besides the frogs and lizards, here over the past half century I have battled many animals eating my captured specimens: deer, armadillos, possums, coons, foxes, skunks, weasels, blue lake crabs, fiddler crabs, crayfish, birds (even hummingbirds), cats, dogs, cattle, bobcats, squirrels, flying squirrels especially in my clearwing moth bucket traps, rats, mice, shrews, spiders, snakes, bats, scorpions, other insects as hornets which can kill and partially eat a hawkmoth four times larger in size ........ Occasionally some of these smaller pests would fall into my traps, and interestingly I once had a racer snake that sat for weeks next to one of my dung beetle traps and ate the beetles that missed falling into the trap as they flew in. I would chase it away daily but just like most all of these pest, they returned every day regardless.

Here is a jpg illustrating a lizard that I would hand feed beetles each day at my light traps. This same species of lizard, sometimes 2-3 of them per trap attended all 7 of my light traps for about 40 years. Imagine how many new state and new US records I never saw. Owls would always attend my light traps nightly for many months each year, especially during times involving migration periods. Perhaps I was more vulnerable because my traps were high-wattage. Bats were especially a problem as they operate usually by flying in a line, one behind the other circling just above the light trap throughout the night dusk to dawn. I have been in open clearings of heavily forest areas operating my light traps and all night long moth wings were twirling down around me from above, a truly amazing event to personally experience. This same scenario of circling feeding bats occurs throughout the world at most all street and highway lights, but seeing them from below the lights is obscured by the brilliance of the light rays upon human eyes. One has to move several hundred feet away from the light source to see the circling bats above. It is obvious why insect populations have dwindled over the centuries in heavily populated cities having millions of bright light feeding stations. And in the daylight hours, all of those animal pest I mention earlier come to feed upon the piles of insects below the lights. It is upsetting to me to find one wing of a rarely encountered in Louisiana large tropical hawk moth sitting on my trap the next day.

Almost forgot about another occasional but most annoying pest at my various traps, the two legged variety. For this reason I placed warning labels upon most of my traps e.g. KEEP AWAY POISON GAS - CYANIDE !!, or WARNING - HUMAN FECES !!

[Chuck]

Up north here, in mid-summer the MV doesn't go on until 9:30pm, and it's not dark until 10pm. And then it's light by 5am. So I have to be out at the MV sheet by 0445 each morning to beat the bluejays. Makes for days and days of very little sleep.

[jhyatt]

I get more varmints in my bait traps than in pheromone or light traps. Hornets certainly can devastate a nice catch!

A friend of mine used to sometimes hang a warning label on his traps with words to the effect: "African Killer Bee Research Trap -- Danger -- Keep Away!'

jh

[kevinkk]

Amazing stuff Vabrou.
I have had the bats, I presume they find everyone's light.
The skunk family one season.
Only once here in Oregon have I encountered a toad after dark.
reminded me of being in the Dominican Republic, but there were
a lot more toads there, you keep thinking it's a big beetle.
And, the kitten- who liked my toes as much as my bugs. I poured more than
one beer on his head.
The wasps show up in the morning if it's warm enough.