Hello everyone. Whilst we have had dreadful weather for the last few days, today has really brightened up. This evening it is so calm and peaceful that Jon and Max from the CFZ (Centre for Fortean Zoology) have come down to do some moth trapping this evening. It really is great fun and you get to see some fantastic moths, which you never even knew existed!
Firstly the mercury vapour lamp, which attracts moths, was set up in our woodland area, near the wooden playground.
Then Greg mixed up treacle in warm water, and as you can see in the picture, he then used a paint brush to paint some on the trees near the moth trap, again to attract the moths. It wasn't long before the moths started to arrive in swarms. Max and Greg were busy catching them in the nets, they were then identified by Jon, and Rossi kept a notepad and recorded the times, species etc. Then each moth was photographed and released.
What a fantastic experience - unbelievable to see all the activity around the mercury vapour light.
The first moth to be caught was a Swallow Tail, followed by a Devon Carpet.
We'll give you a full report tomorrow night. But for now, we'll continue to watch and record the happenings of the night - this will no doubt go on into the early hours of tomorrow.
Thank you for reading our blog, we'll be back tomorrow.
What we always used for "mothing" was a mixture of one part sugar, one part cheap beer, and two parts very warm water. Paint the trees with it and then turn on the lights for some fun.
ReplyDeleteYears and years ago, I did some research work on which sorts of lights are most attractive to moths, this being partly in response to people thinking that the lack of availability of old-style mercury vapour lamps would be a problem.
ReplyDeleteSo, I tested an old-style mercury vapour lamp (which emits a harsh, blueish white light), a new HQL mercury vapour lamp (almost pink in colour, much easier on the eyes than the old style due to less UV light), a 100 watt tungsten filament lamp and one of the then very new energy saver lamps, and finally 12 volt Actinic tube, such as is used in the portable Leeds trap type.
The results were that the tungsten lamp was least attractive (as was already known), the energy saver was much more attractive and the actinic lamp only a little better, whilst the mercury vapour lamps were much, much more attractive with the HQL variant being the better of the two.
I didn't analyse the specific moth types caught by the lamps (I didn't have enough data to do so meaningfully) and in any case this is strongly affected by geography since moths tend to cluster around their foodplants, which can be very strongly local in some cases. However, for assessing habitat richness moths make a very useful indicator tool, and perhaps the best way of testing for habitat richness would be with a network of a number of Leeds type portable lamps, moved about a lot.
Moth trap catches are also affected by weather, humidity, temperature and the phases of the moon; your operating a trap over the last few nights won't have caught as many moths as it might during the dark of the moon, since the moths would have had the full moon to navigate by last night and would have been less confused by lights than they otherwise might have been.
However, the silliest tale of moth trapping I know must surely be the rediscovery of the Rosy Marsh Moth in Wales. For a long time, this moth had been assumed to be extinct in Wales since its foodplant, the bog myrtle plant is rather rare there. However in the 1980s, a couple of Rosy Marsh moths flew into a Rothamsted trap miles from any suitable habitat and at that point, the search was on for where the moths could have come from.
Nothing much more was found until a large colony of the moths was discovered on Cors Fochno (Borth Bog) between Aberystwyth and Machynlleth, and at that point a certain suspicion crept over the researchers.
The only way those moths could have got to that trap is if they'd landed on a train stopped at the Dovey Junction Halt, and had stayed on for a hundred miles or so, thence to fly off and into a remote rural Rothamsted trap which since said traps use carbon tetrachloride as a killing agent was probably not a particularly nice way to end the journey.
However, as a way of rediscovering a near-cryptid insect, this surely has few parallels in the world of science.
Thank you so much for taking the time to post your comments, we all really enjoy reading them. We hope you enjoy our blog.
ReplyDeleteThank you from us all at Hill Top Tails.