I am a back-garden moth botherer, but until six years ago I was happy to be labelled as
just a Birder. My family generously gave me a starter moth kit for my birthday. Big mistake on their part.
 |
| one of my favourites. An elephant hawk moth.(6 records so far) |
Since then whenever my nearest and dearest complain about my “obsession”, I pass the
blame back to them for starting it. In the early days, the many hours spent trawling
through field guides resulted in me seeing moth shapes everywhere even where no moth
was present. These mothy mirages, exacerbated by sleep deprivation, resulted in many a
summer evening passing in a semi-hallucinogenic haze.
There have been many moth induced mishaps. In the act of hurriedly rescuing my trap from a nocturnal thunderstorm I once tripped over the electric cable and ended up sprawled across a wet and spiny shrub in my dressing gown. On another occasion, as I was hunched over the trap at five am, my wife appeared unexpectedly in the doorway to complain about my clattering. Startled, I stood up abruptly and put my back out rather painfully. One day I will probably fall off a chair or table whilst trying to re-catch an escapee that has flown up to the ceiling. Maybe one of these future mishaps will be caught on video and posted here.
My darling wife steadfastly refuses to let me upgrade from an actinic light to a super bright and
productive mercury vapour lamp because it might upset the neighbours, and cause problems with passing aircraft. She is also rightly concerned that it might fuel my obsession.
Despite my relatively puny lamp, I have still recorded over two hundred species most years – not too shabby for a suburban garden in Peterborough. I can only dream of what it would be like to trap somewhere like say, coastal rural Dorset, equipped with a Mercury Vapour light, and all of the spare time of a Victorian Country Parson/Naturalist.
My species total includes all of the types of moth (big ones and little ones) that I can identify without dissection. Following a bit of holiday home mothing in Cumbria I received an email from the
Vice-County (VC) recorder querying whether I had performed a genital examination on one specimen I had recorded online. The answer was categorically no. The record was subsequently and correctly assigned to the "aggregate" as opposed to species level. I hope that any police “spybots” on the search for internet perverts did not flag up the references to genitalia in these communications.
 |
| A weirdo in the dead of night out in the garden looking for moths |
It has been said that mothing is to birding, what crack cocaine is to cannabis. I cannot
comment on this other than to say that there is something highly addictive about opening
up the moth box. In late summer one can wake up to the sight of 150 Large Yellow Under-
pants (
Large Yellow Under-Wing is the more typical moniker, but I prefer Stuart Ball's
choice of name). They thud into the box like a moth hailstorm, but after a bit of pinballing inside the trap they snuggle peacefully into the egg boxes. Some people call them flying cockroaches but that is unfair.
Occasionally something new might turn up among the bulky yellow undergarments. Something like a
rusty dot pearl perhaps, one of which graced my trap in September last year.
Although this is not much of a looker (its a little brown job to use birding parlance), and not especially rare, how often does a bird you have never clapped eyes on before, aka a "lifer", turn up on your home patch? Apart from its novelty, there were two things that fired my interest.
1. The process of trying to nail the ID – using books, websites, twitter and lateral thinking. In the case of the rusty dot pearl, having cracked the ID conundrum, I felt like one of those bleary-eyed junior detectives in a crime drama, experiencing the “eureka!” matching pattern moment just at the point of total despair.
2. This 1cm micro-moth is a migrant. That word is magic to me in the context of
mothing – mainly because I still cannot get my head around the fact that moths
undertake migration. And then they might even go back again.
My first ever scarcity was the
Small Ranunculus. It has the subtle beauty of a lichen and is
a local speciality. I found this in the
Wikipedia entry for this species.
“Notably, during the first three months after they hatch, due to a genetic defect they can
only turn to the left while flying. If they want to go to the right, they must land and turn on
the ground.” Unlikely to be true but hilarious nonetheless.
Another personal favourite is the small but attractive
Toadflax Brocade of which there are
only a handful of records in my area. It is spreading northward and westward across
England. I always look up what food plant(s) each species favours in its life cycle though
perhaps one day I will discover what a Toadflax actually looks like (thereby expanding my
knowledge further). It would be great to build a profile of the habitats and foodplants used
by the moths found in my garden and compare this to others (Natural England are
developing a tool for this type of association analysis, I believe). I would also like to correlate
my moth records with nearby amateur weather station data. These analyses are made
possible because I systematically record all of the moths I am able to identify and enter
these onto the excellent
iRecord online system. The records are then harvested by the VC
recorders, verified and incorporated onto the national moth recording scheme.
I was a bit surprised to discover my home VC was Northamptonshire but do feel a bit
special being a North-Eastern frontiersman watching the borderlands - yes I know this is delusional. I
live close to the Great Fen Project and there are indications that I am starting to record species from this area. As the habitat develops it will be interesting to see what happens.
My home 10km square has nothing like the species list of the adjacent square to the West, ie Werrington. This was where one of our best known “mothmen” – namely Paul Waring (co-author of the best
UK field guide) has done the majority of his recording. Prior to this year, I had only ever met Paul once since I started mothing. This was an unusual encounter to say the least. Whilst competing in my first ever half-marathon, I recognised a spectator sitting in his Werrington garden cheering on the runners, inexplicably wearing a tiger-skin onesie! I approached him, introduced myself, shook his hand and carried on with my run. According to iRecord, a lot of my records are new for my 10km square – even some relatively common species. This shows how under-recorded moths are in certain areas, though this level of under recording is nothing compared with other invertebrate groups.
As a recent retiree I hope there will be many more nights of “moth bothering”, and I can
build my experience in Citizen Science, and maybe other taxonomic groups too. I intend to
share my adventures, musings and mishaps through this blog. This might encourage others to give it a try or perhaps put them off the idea for good.
 |
Pale Prominent. One of the grumpiest looking moths you will find. Photographed 20 August 2017
|
