18 NEBRASKAland • MARCH 2018
PHOTO
BY
GERRY
STEINAUER
A
s a kid I would get excited at the sight of a
huge cecropia moth fluttering about the street
light while we played kick the can at night or a
hummingbird-like sphinx moth hovering about
my mom's petunias. But for the most part, I
never gave much thought to moths. They were mostly small,
dull creatures of the night, the ugly cousins of the beautiful,
day-flying butterflies.
My short-sighted view of moths recently changed. An
intriguing night of mothing last August with Mark Brogie in
the backyard of his Creighton home enlightened me to the
diversity and splendor of Nebraska's moths, a diversity that
presently is largely undocumented and awaiting discovery.
A Night of Mothing
On that August evening, as I drove eastward on Highway
59 toward the small town of Creighton in Knox County, the
landscape conveyed predictable eastern Nebraska: corn and
soybean fields dominated, woodlots sheltered farmsteads
and a few surviving prairie pastures and hay meadows
were scattered among the rolling hills and valleys. Arriving
at Brogie's house on the edge of town, his yard also was
typical: a bluegrass lawn with basswood trees in front, while
a few pines, lilac hedge, black walnut and white mulberry
graced the back. I was baffled that Brogie was capturing
such an abundance of moth species in this rural setting with
Hidden by the Night
By Gerry Steinauer, Botanist
PHOTO
BY
CHRIS
HELZER
