It Has Been a Busy Two Months   Since "Opening for Business" on November 14th. The response to the opening announcement, by both amateur and professional lepidopterists and nature photographers, has been heartwarming. From 21 December through 11 January I experienced an Internet service outage and keeping up with email was a problem. It is possible that some email was missed during that period, and if you were expecting a response that didn't arrive I apologize for the omission and ask that you write again.

Thanks go to all those who have taken the time to review the unidentified moths pages and submit identifications. Anthony Thomas, Hugh McGuinness and Michael Sabourin have been especially active at this and deserve the appreciation of everyone seeking to have their photographs identified. This is what we are all about.

Without the willingness of many people to share their photographs here this website cannot fulfill its proposed function. Thus, our thanks go to the many new contributors who include Paul Dennehy, Ronnie Gaubert, John Gruber, Mike Harp, Ed Knudson, Bruce Marlin, Tom Murray, Steve Nanz, Phil Penketh, Lewis Scharpf, Darryl Searcy, George Small, Nolie Schneider, Brent Steury, Bruce Walsh and Dave Wikle. It doesn't matter whether you have just one, a few, or many moth photos. It is the collective contributions from many that will build a significant library of researchable material.

Western Noctuoidae:  39 plates have been created that show several thousand pinned specimens. The initial core of photographs came from the Lafontaine-Troubridge Canadian collection, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and from Bruce Walsh at the University of Arizona as well as photos from many sources that appear on eastern plates for species that also range westward. Dave Wikle has agreed to serve as West Coast Coordinator and has already begun filling in many of the blank spaces for needed species. Many more contributions are needed.

Living Moth Photographs:  18 very large pages (so far) have been created to display your photographs of living moths. These will exhibit up to four or more photos per species and will serve as the "stock" of photographs to appear eventually on individual species pages. This section of the website will be expanded greatly over time. Contributions of photographs of all species will be appreciated. So far contribution have ranged from single photographs into the hundreds. Every one is important.

Nolie Schneider photographs moths at her home along the Ottawa River in Canada and has so far contributed about 120 photos of living moths (and the soon-to-be-moth shown at left). Nolie is also a whiz at removing unsightly collection labels from the backgrounds of specimen photographs, and her contributions in that regard are also greatly appreciated.

Darryl Searcy is close to a different river, the Escambia, deep down in southwestern Alabama. He's a retired botanist and gentleman farmer (pasture, horses, cows) with a greenhouse filled with orchids. Moths flock to the outside, and sometimes the inside, of his greenhouse which remains lighted at night. Before sunrise Darryl, first cup of coffee in hand, goes out to collect his moths. During September and October I could depend on receiving an email within a few minutes of 6 am, inquiring about the most puzzling moth of the "night." But that's not all -- he has a steady stream of moths in January. He is approaching the 100 mark in photographs shown in the living moth archive. Darryl has already accomplished what I hope to achieve: his website on the flora and fauna of the Escambia region has been adopted by and is now hosted at his local community college. It has become a permanent online educational resource.

Steve Nanz, lives about as far east as you can get in New York at the tip of Long Island at Montauk. As if that's not east enough, he also goes down east to Monhegan Island in Maine just to make sure he covers everything. Steve has reorganizing his website, making it easier to locate moths to show here in the live moth archives.

Tom Murray's moths often hail from Harvard, Massachusetts, but he takes photos wherever he travels. He has some really cool moth photos from Monterey in Mexico as well as from the Rio Grande valley and elsewhere.

Nolie Schneider still has some moths on one of our unidentifieds pages. Most of them have now been identified and moved into the live moth archives.

Your Unidentified Moths: Send them in. Any number, 1 to 100 or more, just pick the best photo of each species that you can't identify. Once a photo has been identified it will move to the live moth archives where it can help others to identify their moths.