Survey links:
Observations
Taxon List

We tallied over 100 species of moths on June 9, a nice haul for forgoing the May survey due to weeks of rain and having to wait a few extra weeks until this survey. I estimate the moth taxon count to be in the 120s, with a variety of other insects also documented. Unlike the April survey, which documented about 20 moth taxa until the activity declined by 10 pm, the action was still building by the June survey's end at around midnight.

Interesting finds

This Fine-lined Gray (Exelis pyrolaria), a geometer moth, is an apparent new county record. This moth showed up to the blacklight near the stream near the Plummer House, a disappointing location in April but quite productive in June.

The Eastern Tent Caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) that swarmed in tents on cherry trees in April and May were now in flight and may have been the most abundant moth of the evening:

Several micromoths potentially from a few different families still have identifications pending at BAMONA. This gelechioid moth photographed by Nick Iascone is one of them:

A Phantom Crane Fly (Bittacomorpha clavipes) was one of the more distinctive non-moth creatures to visit the blacklight along the Beaver Rock Trail:

A new species for me but not for the county was this Pink-shaded Fern Moth (Callopistria mollissima), one of the noctuid moths. It did a lot of fluttering in place or while slowly walking up the sheet, a great opportunity for seeing the hindwings, which are usually covered by the forewings:

The blacklight in the woods unsurprisingly turned up a variety of litter moths (Subfamily Herminiinae), including this Smoky Idia Moth (Idia scobialis):

We saw the colorful Lead-colored Lichen Moths (Cisthene plumbea) at multiple stations:

We saw Canadian Melanolophia Moths (Melanolophia canadaria) again, one of the common species from the April survey:

Finally, we saw the Batman Moth (Coelostathma discopunctana), one of the small tortricid leafrollers:

Fellow surveyors can still submit their observations from this survey and the April survey to help us complete the documentation. No photographer ever has the opportunity to document three stations of subjects at once, and typically at least 10% of species are missed by any particular photographer, so one should not assume someone else has covered them all. Fellow surveyors are welcome to email me or message me here within iNaturalist if they would like any help in submitting their photo observations. We'd like to see them all, even if the observations may be duplicates.

I'd like to thank all our volunteers for their assistance and hope to see them at the next survey at the end of June.

Some useful links for the April 18 survey:

All observations
Leps only
Taxon list

Interesting finds

Most of the moths we observed were common, and we're likely to see them again. One of my goals in this project is to help the folks at BAMONA (http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/) and MBP (http://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/) improve their coverage of Maryland's biodiversity. Any new county record that we find and they lack is of some interest.

Jennifer Rooks photographed a Yellow-dusted Cream Moth, an apparent new record for Anne Arundel County. I suspect it's not as rare as it is underreported. BugGuide reports the larval foodplants as "birch, blueberry, willow, and occasionally poplar."

The mayfly I photographed on the Plummer House was identified by Roger Rohrbeck as a female imago of Cloeon dipterum, one of the small minnow mayflies. This is a new county record for MBP.

Tips for contributors:

1. Make sure the location of each observation is specified.

2. Do give each of your observations your own identification based on your own identification skill, and avoid guesses in the ID. This can be a coarse ID (like Order Lepidoptera or even Phylum Arthropoda) if you cannot identify further -- and this is perfectly OK. No observation should show "Unknown" or "Something".

   If you want to guess a finer ID than what you're certain of, include the guess as a comment. The iNat community and I will ID many observations for us, and we can seek IDs from other resources (like BAMONA and BugGuide) for others.

3. Use the Observation Source field for any IDs you've sought from outside iNat and that aren't your own. For ID resources that give each observation its own page (like BAMONA and BugGuide), put the observation URL in the field. Otherwise give the name of the identifier.

   You can add this field to an observation by viewing the observation page like
   http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2977578
   and clicking on "Add/edit more fields" below the observation photos.

There are a few ways to create observations from photos in iNaturalist.

1. Bulk upload from your hard drive:
   Use the Observation Photo Uploader at
   http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/upload
   (Or navigate there by mousing-over your username menu at the top right, click on Add under Observations, and click on From Photos at the top right.)

First, select your best (most diagnostically useful) photo of each specimen -- that's only one photo for each specimen -- and import them. Each photo becomes an observation. The timestamp, location (lat., lon.), and species/taxon are read from the photo file if they are included in the metadata. You can fill in any missing data or correct anything that was misinterpreted during the upload.

Then to add more photos to an observation, View that observation and click on "Add more photos" below the photo. For example, one such observation page is:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2977459

1. Import from Flickr, Google Photos, Facebook, etc:
   Go to your username menu at the top right at click on Account.
   Under "Connected Accounts" at the top right, pick your photo sharing service and grant iNaturalist permission to access your photos. You have to do this part only once.
   Then go to the Import Observations page (which is also in your top-right username menu):
   http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/import

2. Upload from your smartphone:
   Download and install the free iNaturalist app (iOS or Andriod).
   Log into your iNat account in the app.
   Create observations one by one by selecting photos from your device, entering an ID (even if it's a coarse one like Lepidoptera or Insecta), and uploading the completed observation.

To qualify for the Jug Bay Moth Monitoring project, the observation must have a location within a Jug Bay natural area, a date, a photo, and an ID within Phylum Arthropoda.

If your camera does not put location info in your photo files, then after you've created your observations, you can use the Batch Edit feature to add a common location to many observations at once.
To do this, go to the Your Observations page by clicking on the top-right username menu, and click on Observations. The Batch Edit button is at the top of the page.

Select the observations whose location you want to set.
Click Edit Selected at the top.
Open the yellow Batch Operations box at the top.
Click on the text box in the third column, and you can enter the location.
Click the Apply button below that 3rd column text box, and then scroll down and click on Save All.