Advice for young mothers

Tip #1: If you like night-flying insects, call yourself a junior lepidopterist. If you say you are a young moth-er, the advice you get might be quite different to what you are expecting....

With last night being overcast and relatively still, warm and humid, it seemed to be the ideal time to break out the Frampton Marsh moth trap and see what might be flying about. Once we found it of course.... Took us a good bit of searching to discover that Simon the assistant warden had it in his garage at home. But once we had it, we set it up and left it running in the garden of the RSPB offices.

The trap itself is quite simple. A box, into which leads a funnel. And above which is a light, which basically looks like a mini fluorescent tube. This is an 'actinic tube', which gives off (to our eyes) a pale blue light, but also plenty of ultraviolet light. Invisible to us, but irresistible to moths who come to look at it. They flutter around the light, then sit down to have a rest. Some sit go down the funnel and, once in the box, the design means it is hard for them to get back out. In the morning the light is turned off, the box opened and the moths are identified, counted and released unharmed.

So why look at moths? Well, whilst butterflies get all the attention, they are very many more moths about out there. Including some really quite pretty ones. There are only 59 species of butterfly which breed in the UK, but 2500 species of moth. Yes, you heard me, 2500!

So, what did we catch last night?

Well, to be honest it wasn't a great haul. I think the positioning of the trap could be improved upon, and that we were too close to the security lights on the office. We managed a grand total of three moths and a beetle. All different species.

The beetle was a big black thing, with bright red antennae. This turned out to be a black burying beetle. One of the so-called sexton beetles, who look for dead bodies of rodents, birds etc. They lay their eggs in them so their larvae have plenty of food, then cover the body with soil. thus giving them their name. Rather smart, but also rather whiffy!

One of the great things with moths is their lovely names. The species we caught were the common quaker, the hebrew character and what appears to be a pale pinion. Quite an unusual moth for this area as they prefer broadleaved woodland, rather than arable fields. Alas, none of them were particularly spectacular in appearance. But we'll keep trying and let you know if we catch anything special.