Moths coming to lights at night

[HeinzeDJAK]

Hi!

I enjoyed reading both postings on this short thread so far.  It somewhat
explained something I saw dramatically in north west Missouri last summer.  I
was out in country, and I had a MV light and sheet set up.  I enjoy sitting
next to the sheet and watching the moths come in.  I fond that the greater part
of the moths, especially sphinxes and saturniids would hit the ground atleast
5-15 from the light.  The hay was about 2-3 feet high, so that sort of elevates
the ground from a moths' point of view, but I still think they would have hit
the ground even without the hay.  The sentence or so about the reflection of
the moon on the water seems to shed atleast a dim light on it.  If the moon was
on the ground instead of the sky, possibly the moths would sort of fly as if
the world was upside down.  Maybe??

Another interesting thing on the same sort of subject happened to me about 150
miles north of where I live (Houston, TX).  I had set up my MV light pretty
early, and I was doing some fishing from a canoe in the middle of a small
lake/pond around 9:30 pm.  There had been lots of those birds that just skim
the water (maybe they were bats - I'm no bird watcher), and so when I saw this
thing that looked very similar, if a bit lighter in color, come zooming over
the water, touching it a bit in a few places, I thought that was what it was. 
But, it came directly up to me and collided with my shirt.  The thing turned
out to be a white lined sphinx, although I missed it when I tried to get it
with my hands.  I still wondered about why a moth would be flying over a pond
so closely.  Possibly it could be explained  to some degree in the same way as
what I described first??  

There is probably no way that we can describe such a complicated thing in its
entirety, but I sure enjoy reading things that seem to fit my observations
quite well.  

See ya 'round,
Dar