What is in the box, what each thing is for, what to add, and the paper that goes with it.
Two speeds
Nothing here should ever wait on a computer. Out in the field it is a net, a bag and a pencil: catch it, write the number on the bag, write what you saw on a sheet or in any notebook. That is a complete record and it is enough.
Back home, the desk turns it into a catalog entry in about a minute — and if you would rather just say it out loud, the chat connector types it in for you. Photos, the map, the labels, the public page, all follow from that.
The rule that joins the two: the box, the binder and the site say the same thing. Specimens in the case grouped by order, each with its number on the label. Day sheets in the binder by date. Same numbers, same names, same dates, everywhere.
In the box
Catching. The handle extends to four feet for things up high; the soft mesh bag will not shred a wing.
A few drops of killing agent onto the plaster in the lid; the vapour fills the jar. Ten to twenty minutes and then OUT, or the jar starts doing damage.
The agent is not in the kit — see below. Or skip the jar: a bag in the freezer does the same job overnight.
Butterflies and moths go straight into one with the wings folded up, so nothing rubs the scales off on the way home.
The pin is the specimen's spine for the next hundred years. Size 3 is the general-purpose size; very small insects get glued to a point instead.
Sets every specimen and every label at the same height on the pin. Specimen at the top step, locality label at the middle, determination label at the bottom.
For anything with wings worth showing: the body goes in the groove and the wings are pinned flat with strips of paper until dry.
Needs strips of tracing paper or glassine and a few extra pins. Any paper works.
The fine ones move a wing without touching it with a finger. The wide ones move a specimen.
Enough to count antenna segments and see whether a wing has hairs. A phone camera zoomed in works nearly as well.
The labels. Two go under every specimen. The desk shows exactly what to write on each.
Ecology Supplies pre-cut labels 18 × 8 mm ↗ · Amazon: insect specimen labels, archival, 18 × 8 mm ↗
Pigment ink that will not fade or run. The only pen that touches a label.
Where finished specimens live. Write Case 1 and Case 2 on the lids; inside, group by order with a header label above each group. The small folding boxes are for holding and carrying, not for keeping.
Drying happens on the spreading board, 7 to 14 days. Nothing goes in a case until it is dry, labelled, and off the board.
Not in the box
The kit is complete for catching and pinning. These are the things the field guide assumes and the kit leaves out. Only the first two matter this week.
The killing agent for the jars. A small bottle lasts a season. Non-acetone nail polish remover is mostly ethyl acetate and works in a pinch.
Or don't use the jars at all: bag it, freeze it overnight. The freezer is already the plan.
For the bag in the field. Pen runs; pencil does not. Nothing fancier than this.
Anything dried out and brittle softens in an hour in a sealed tub with a damp paper towel in the bottom and the specimen on a bit of card above it. A takeout container is a relaxing box.
Make one. Do not buy one.
Dermestid beetles eat collections. A moth-crystal (naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene) pinned in a corner of the storage box, replaced twice a year, is the standard defence.
Only if you want to print labels instead of writing them: 100% cotton rag cardstock, 65–110 lb, and a LASER printer. Inkjet ink wicks at 4-point and is not archival.
Small open boxes that sit inside the storage box so a whole order can be lifted out together. Nice at fifty specimens; unnecessary at ten.
The paper
One page of twenty rows for one place on one day, and one page of bag slips. Print a pile at the start of a season. Or use any notebook — the sheet is a convenience, not a rule.
Every queued specimen's two labels at exact size, for laser printing on cotton rag. Behind the login.
Every specimen by number, one line each, for the binder — so the box, the binder and the site all say the same thing. Behind the login.
The case. Write Case 1, Case 2 on the lids. Inside, group by order — all the beetles together, all the flies together — with a small header label pinned above each group. Leave room in each group; it will grow. The site's Case, Tray and Position fields record where each specimen sits.
The binder. One folder per volume. Day sheets in date order at the front; the printed catalog list behind them, replaced whenever it grows. A judge, a grandparent or Jed in ten years can open it and find any specimen by its number and its case without a screen.