Ceredigion Moth Workshop and Fieldtrip

I had a good day at the Cardiganshire Moth Workshop in Borth on Saturday.

There was a good attendance with 12 people there, including some from further south in the County which is promising.

We started off going through the contents of some moth traps that had been left out the night before. The one in the Youth Hostel grounds didn’t yield anything but Mike had placed traps on the bog and at his house, both of which had moderate catches. Lots of Small Quakers and Yellow Horned, plus a gorgeous Oak Beauty. Norman had brought some along too from his trap, with Engrailed and Clouded Drab.

I was quite reassured to see that my trap had probably been one of the more productive that night with 30 moths, and about 8 different species.

Norman Lowe then gave us a talk on Moth Identification and went off on a few tangents about Clear Wings, pheremones and  some other interesting things. After lunch we continued with the talks and discussions about the future plans for the Ceredigion Moth Group which seems to be going from strength to strength. It was also encouraging to hear that we will have close to 200,000 records to submit to Butterfly Conservation for inclusion in their forthcoming atlas and moth distribution maps. It will be good to get the moths of VC46 on the map at last.

We also had a bit of a chat about the Dasystoma salicella I had photographed a few days earlier. I’m amazed at how much attention this one photo has got, but its nice for it to be so well received. It also looks as though that my sighting of it may actually be the first record of that species for the county. That’s quite cool too!

Norman then finished up with a brief introduction to leaf-miners.

After the meeting I took people up to the boardwalk on Cors Fochno for an impromptu field trip in search the Orange Underwing. Unfortunately the sun had gone in and we didn’t see much. We did take a look at some leaf miners on Bramble leaves and we did see a couple of moths on the wing, the second of which could have been an Orange Underwing, but I guess we’ll never know for sure! We also had a good look at some of the birch trees there as Norman seems to think that they would be ideal for Clearwings. I shall be searching for them later in the year.

All in all, a good day. Lots of interesting things discussed, some very knowledgeable people and a promising start for the Ceredigion Moth Group with plenty of enthusiasm.

1 Response

  1. Avatar forComment Author Rachel says:

    I was sorry that we weren’t able to make it, but we were both working in the morning.

    Hopefully we’ll be able to come to something soon. Glad it was a good day.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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