"Dark descends upon a dead-end property atop a winding mountain road and Ian McMaster steps out into the forest. Protective goggles perched atop his grey hair, torch in hand, McMaster is drawn into the gums that surround his rammed-earth home toward a white sheet shining in UV light like a stage prop moon. He is not alone. He is setting out to show some musicians a moth."
"The mission, though, is almost certain to fail. McMaster has gone looking for moths or mothing about four nights every week for the past seven years on the property that he and wife Chrissie share atop Mount Mellum in the Sunshine Coast hinterland of Queensland. In all those years he has only once seen the species of moth that singer-songwriter Emma Bosworth hopes to see on this night in late August. And that time McMaster wasn't even mothing."
"The retired business executive had returned home after a fruitless night spent around rotting bananas said to lure the endangered moth from the darkest depths of old growth rainforest. It was morning. There was this big, grey looking thing on my veranda door and I thought: oh what's this? A bat? A mouse? McMasters says. Then I looked at it more closely and, lo and behold: southern pink underwing moth. Lo and behold: the southern pink underwing moth."
Ian McMaster searches for moths about four nights each week on the 100-hectare property he and his wife Chrissie own atop Mount Mellum in Queensland. He has recorded more than 2,000 moth species there, about a quarter still undescribed, after rehabilitating an old cattle and banana farm into a nature refuge covering roughly 90% of the land. McMaster uses UV-lit white sheets and baits such as rotting bananas to attract moths. He has only once encountered the rare southern pink underwing moth, which once rested on his verandah in daylight before disappearing at night. Musicians joined a nocturnal search to glimpse the elusive moth.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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