Firstly, thank you to everyone who came along to our National Moth Night event last weekend - it was great to see so much enthusiasm for our night creatures!
We began by taking a closer look at the moths we had caught over the previous night - and a very fine selection we had too - including a splendid Clifden nonpareil (also known as a blue underwing).
This large moth is a pretty rare migrant species, thought to arrive here following a crossing over the North Sea from Eastern Europe or Scandinavia, and as you can see it is beginning to look a little tatty, going bald on top and someone has had a peck of its wing!
I have never seen one of these in my 10 years of moth trapping so was really rather excited.
As darkness fell we took a brief wander and using the detectors quickly picked up some pipistrelle bats and also plenty of chirruping (or stridulating) crickets. A little further afield it seemed a little quiet for bats so we wandered back up towards the visitor centre and the moth trap. And that was where we found all the bats...
Although pipistrelle bats tend to eat midges (around 3000 of them each night) they were not going to ignore the many moths that were being attracted to our light. Whilst I felt rather sorry for the moths, it did ensure that all of our guests had great views of the bats flitting around and picked up plenty of 'feeding buzzes' on the bat detectors (which sound like someone 'blowing a raspberry').
We'll be submitting our moth list to add to the national moth night records:
Clifden nonpareil, frosted orange, large yellow underwing (hundreds of), light emerald, angle shades, small square spot, vestal, brimstone, burnished brass, Chinese character, large thorn, canary shouldered thorn, broad bordered yellow underwing, gold spot, lesser swallow prominent, feathered gothic, the snout, dusky thorn, setaceous Hebrew character, white point, flame shoulder, August thorn, common carpet, blood vein, lesser yellow underwing, red underwing, silver Y, double striped pug, copper underwing, heath rustic, straw dot, common wainscot, green carpet, pine carpet, light brown apple moth, maiden's blush, mother of pearl.
Here are some photos - can you match the moth with it's name?
You have a burnished brass, angle shades, canary shouldered thorn and a light emerald (but not in that order - that's what you need to work out!)