I HAVE recently joined an underground society, a semi-secret club whose members are mainly active at night and whose interests would horrify anyone suffering from mottephobia. It is not as dramatic as it sounds; basically I have had a go at catching and identifying moths in my back garden.

By pure coincidence the night of my first attempt was June 10 – National Moth Night. It wasn't a roaring success, I caught one moth and a large beetle called a cockchafer. Since then however, I have had more success, probably due more to the advance of summer than any skill on my part.

Catching moths is remarkably easy – just switch on a bright light and they will come to you. If this light is shone onto a white sheet the moths will land on that and can be popped into a handy jar to observe and identify there and then.

I opted for an alternative lazy man's method called a Robinson trap, named presumably after the person invented it, which involves a bright light again but also a box and a funnel.

The moths blunder towards the light (as is their want) then fall down the funnel and into the box where they find lots of egg-boxes. The cardboard cups of the egg-boxes seem irresistible to the moths and they settle down to roost the daylight hours. All I have to do is open the box the following day and see what is asleep in there.

After four nights of collecting, my total count was almost 100 moths of 20 different species which I thought was quite impressive until I consulted some online identification pages.

The "common garden moths" page on birdlist.co.uk very helpfully illustrates 166 different species out of a country-wide list of 900, and these are just the big ones.

Most amateur lepidopterists (butterfly and moth scientists) are only interested in macro-moths, those with a wingspan of 2cm or more, but there are specialists out there that have identified a further 1,600 different micro-moths.

Moth catching is not a new past time; it was quite the fashionable obsession among Victorian middle-class natural historians.

Consequently, most of our 900 macro-moths not only have a binomial scientific name, but an English one as well. Coming up with so many names is no mean feat and has resulted in some very creative linguistics. Some almost named themselves – a creature with red and black stripes has to be a tiger moth, black and white patches is a magpie and bright yellow all over a brimstone, but others are less obvious.

Many names refer to distinctive markings on the wings, like heart and dart, silver Y and figure of eighty. Some, like polar hawk moth and foxglove pug are named after their caterpillar's food-plant, while wing shape gives V pug and hooktip their labels.

There are more than a few names whose origin defies logic; I suspect the involvement of a 19th century opium den in the invention of Cousin German, Bloxworth Snout, Oblique Carpet and The Confused.

If you fancy studying the moths in your own back garden all you need is a bright torch and a sheet or, like me, you can get hold of a Robinson trap. You will need £300 for a ready-made one, but my DIY one works fine and only cost me £30 for the bits, with £20 of that going on the fancy lightbulb.

For the record, the handsomest looking residents of my back garden were the ermine moth, burnished brass and large elephant hawk moth with the wackiest name prize going to the Hebrew character.