Where to place bait traps?

How many bait traps are you taking with you. Get one high up in the trees. You can place them at varying heights along a trail. Bananas, sugar and water work best. If you use rotting fish, snakes etc, be prepared for a host of flies.

Check your traps about every two hours and keep the number of entrapped insect low which will reduce damage to entrapped Lepidoptera.

Keep your bait juicy. Use water only. Do not use alcohol (Beer, Wine, Whiskey. Moonshine, Bourbon, Liquors, Scotch and just plain Hooch). No Alcohol, period. It will quickly turn to vinegar and render your trap useless.

If the top of your traps are made of screen, make a top from cardboard and set it on the top of your trap. You can place a small stone/rock to hold the card board in place. The card board will provide a dark area for Lepidoptera to hide under.

Be contestant and you should collect lots of specimens. I also understand that many longhorns beetles will visit bait traps.

Just prior to dark, check and empty your traps, juice up the Bait.

I'll be taking 5 traps with me, I have limited space. Should I start preparing the rotten banana recipe and take it with me or should I make it once I'm there?

Personally, I'd keep different types of bait separated in different traps. If they're fairly close together, it'd make an interesting comparison of results.

I try to place traps at the edge of a clearing or on a forest edge, where there's a bit of direct sunshine on the trap at some part of the day. Traps well into the woods seldom do as well for me as ones of the edge.

Best of luck,
jh

Bananas ripen very quickly in the tropics. Find the ripest ones you can and put them in a sealed bag or container for ca. 24 hours and should be good to go. Bringing bait with you usually isn't necessary or a good idea. I've always added some beer to the mix and never had any issues.

Buy the way - the best way to get traps up high is to take "balls" of cotton string with you. The balls are heavy enough to throw well, they unwind easily - taken together, this gets you over some pretty high branches. I have a bone spur in my shoulder - and I can still get 30-40 feet up. That's another reason why I like to hang traps along dirt roads - retrieving the ball of string is a lot less scary on the dirt road than inside dense brush. And the road gives you plenty of over hanging limbs as targets.

Photo of bugs on bait smeared in tree limb

John, I’m interested to know where or who your traps are from. I think I remember seeing them but don’t remember from where.

As in regards to bait trapping I always preferred using fishing line as ants don’t climb on it (or less likely to) and I would always use a slingshot and a fishing weight to get over the high branches, but I know that some areas in Brasil (I don’t know the situation in Ecuador) the forestry police “polícia ambiental” has a tendency to take them away when they see them (this was when I was much younger not sure how it’s now).

As for the bait you should try looking around the area you will be at to see if there are any fruit trees, in China there are orange trees everywhere and there are ready to use rotting oranges on the ground, these even tend to attract some nice moths that I haven’t been able to catch on the other baits.

I spent a significant portion of my childhood in Brasil and my first butterfly I collected was actually from Brasil. There are many banana plantations and citrus plantations (watch out for the oranges called “naranja serra d’água” as they tend to be terrible for bait) and there were also many dropped fruit. If you resort to collecting fruits I would suggest you go in the rural areas and collect some mangoes from the local mango trees, there will be many on the ground. the locals may tell you they’re “bichada” as they are oftentimes crawling with maggots but they are fantastic tasting if you get one from the tree maggots and all, they also make fantastic bait(my go to bait). Just try not to eat all of your bait!


Note of caution, watch out for the snakes as most snakes you will encounter in the tropics are suit to sending you to the ground. They are especially prevalent in the fruit areas looking for the mice enjoying the fruit. When I was a kid (under 15) we had some leather chainsaw pants that we’d wear as snake protection. Keep in mind snakes also frequent trees!


When I collected in Brasil (usually summer only) I would usually just set a pile of fruit in the areas and I’d do a morning and afternoon walk and catch any specimens, then I’d spend a good portion of my night catching moths beetles etc at the porch light.

Of course these are my experiences in Brasil, I’m sure there will be some differences in Ecuador, but one tip would be if you don’t have much success in the forested areas try going in the rural areas and asking a local to watch your trap, you can also take this opportunity to ask for bait and where the best butterfly spots are. Most of the locals are very friendly and won’t hesitate to help you, I’ve found some of my best butterfly honey holes by asking locals，one key example would be on my visit to Cambodia when some locals a little younger than me saw me catching butterflies and invited me to a area where I encountered many butterflies, it was a long walk to the spot but it was worth it in the end, they also used my back up net to help me catch.

Some experiences you leave with when you originally came just for butterflies are just amazing, so be open to the side trips and journeys you may encounter but trust your gut if you think something is wrong and be careful.

Espero tengas una experiencia maravillosa con muchas mariposas!