ATHOL – People from North Quabbin, Boston and around New England gathered at the Pleasant Street home of David Small for the annual Moth Ball Saturday night.

The event was sponsored by the Athol Bird & Nature Club (ABNC). Small, who is president of the club, has been holding the event every year since 2009, when those in attendance included just a few close friends. Visitors to last weekend’s Moth Ball included a wide range of nature lovers, from the simply curious to avid amateurs to professional entomologists.

Small said that around 70 people took part in the event, and later added that this included a group of entomology students from UMass Amherst. He said the last of the group left around 4:15 a.m. on Sunday.

The event started at 9 p.m. and continued well into the evening. The longer one stayed, the more species of lepidoptera – an order of winged insects that includes butterflies and moths – one was likely to see.

“So if you’re out here at two in the morning, you’re going to see some things you may not see at ten o’clock,” said Small. “The later you stay, the more you see.”

Asked why so many species of moth are attracted to light, Small joked that he didn’t know if he was qualified to answer such a question – but did his best anyway.

“A lot of these lepidoptera see ultraviolet,” Small said. “A large group of flowers of the same kind (like the groups of flowers in his garden) give off an ultraviolet signature. So, it’s the wavelength of light.”

The wall of the barn abutting his patio was equipped with a mercury vapor bulb, which Small said gives off the widest bandwidth of light, along with an ultraviolet light.

“So what happens many nights,” said Small, “is that the mercury light will draw them in, and then they’ll tend to land by the ultraviolet light, which is a little less harsh.”

Small had two similar viewing stations set up, one near his vegetable garden and another deeper into the woods bordering his backyard. Small, an avid naturalist since he was in junior high school in Athol, explained his interest in moths and butterflies was piqued after taking a week-long class in lepidoptera while visiting the Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Arizona, around 2006. The symposium, he said, was run by the American Museum of Natural History.

One of the Moth Ball attendees was Tom Murray of Groton. Murray – who has made a hobby of observing and photographing nature – is the author of “Insects of New England and New York: A Handy Field Guide to 500 of Our Most Distinctive and Interesting Insects.” The 400-page book, published in 2012, includes sharp color photographs taken by the author, accompanied by descriptive text.

Murray said he became actively involved in nature photography about 25 years ago.

“I’ve always liked nature. As a little kid, 4 or 5 years old, I’d go around the neighborhood catching snakes and doing all sorts of stuff like that,” Murray said. “I started birding in 1989 and got my first digital camera in 2000. After taking pictures of birds, I started looking pictures of dragonflies and butterflies – taking pictures and then identifying them.”

Murray said most of the species of moths he was likely to see Saturday night would be the same as those in Groton, “but there are some species I see at Dave’s that I don’t normally get at home. I have over 17-hundred-30 species of moth in my yard, but I’ve only seen 10 new ones this year. At the Moth Ball, I might see something different, but it’s just nice to see Dave and other people I know.”

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@aol.com.