Last night was the worst I've had since I started photographing moths with the black light at the beginning of this month. I had wasps, click beetles, stag beetles, fireflies, winged ants, and leafhoppers but very few moths. Most of those were micros or ones I already had. Those @%$*&! little brown May Beetles drove me crazy, one got behind my glasses lens, one got in my hair, then another crawled down the back of my shirt! :-0 To top it off, mosquitoes were biting my legs, so I was just about to call it quits around mid-night when I spied this gorgeous moth on my window frame! It was too high to use my tripod, so I had to stand on my step stool with one foot, the other foot was on the recycle bin, my knee was on the grill and I propped the camera on my arm to try to keep it steady to get the photo. In the meantime, I was getting assaulted by all kinds of insects flying flying around the porch light above my head.
After several lousy shots, I decided to risk catching the moth in a jar and transferred it to the sheet. It stayed there for a short time and then flew to the post on the carport --- FINALLY, I was able to get a good photo!!!
Thanks to the folks in the TN Moth Group for letting me know it is a Zebra Conchylodes Moth. I just thought fellow moth-ers would appreciate this story, I'm sure most of them have had similar experiences at one time or another! :) I guess you have to have a few bad nights to make you appreciate the good ones. I'm just so thankful this beautiful creature decided to stop by for a visit to save my night! :) I'm now up to 80 moths for the Anderson Co. record (yes, people really do keep tabs on this!), we're up to about 4th in the state in the number of species recorded rankings.
My "known moths" gallery can be viewed at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/klight10/MothsAndersonCountyTN2010#
I have them organized by wing shape, I'm not good enough at the families yet to list them that way! Moths aren't just organized by families, they have "superfamilies" and even "tribes"! Now I can appreciate why people have a hard time finding wildflowers in books listed by families! Hopefully, in time, I will start to get the hang of it with the moths!
After several lousy shots, I decided to risk catching the moth in a jar and transferred it to the sheet. It stayed there for a short time and then flew to the post on the carport --- FINALLY, I was able to get a good photo!!! 
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