So… has March been any better this year, compared to last in terms of moths?

Last year I put the trap out 6 times in March, this year 5 times.

Last year, I had 6 species, which were:

This year, I’ve also had 6 species – but different species. This year, I’ve had:

Dotted Border was the only species that was new to me and my garden, compared to last year. Early Grey was recorded last year, but not until April.

As for species numbers, the best night last year totalled 5 moths of 2 species (4 Chestnut, 1 Pale Brindled Beauty). This year, the best night totalled 51 moths of 2 species (31 Hebrew Character, 20 Common Quaker). The highest number of species on a single night was 5.

What conclusions can we draw from that?

Not a lot, really. I think it’s reasonably safe to assume that as it was quite mild towards the end of March, it resulted in earlier hatchings of some species – namely the Hebrew Character and Common Quaker (both pictured below). Are there more of them, though? Well, I’ve definitely had more on any given night this year compared with last year, so I guess that this year could be a good year – at least for the earlier moths of the year!

Hebrew Character

Common Quaker

I figure that if you’re reading this, you’re probably a user of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Just to let you all know that Butterfly Conservation have now established a presence on both.

Their Facebook page can be found HERE

Their Twitter feed can be found HERE

In other news, I saw my first butterfly of the year on Sunday 27th February – a Small Tortoiseshell on the wing in Dalgety Bay. By far the earliest I’ve seen one!.

I’ve also had my moth trap out twice this year, so far. The first time, I managed to trap 4 Hebrew Character and 1 Dotted Border – the second time, nothing at all. On the plus side, though, the Dotted Border is not a common record for Fife.

So, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! It’ll come as no surprise to readers of this blog that my charity of choice for the walk is Butterfly Conservation. As I share my interests and concerns with the charity, they were the logical choice.

If anyone does feel that they wish to support me in this, please click on the ‘Sponsor Me’ link on the bar to the right. All donations are gratefully received and will go direct to Butterfly Conservation themselves.

If anyone wants to track my progress in getting fit for the mammoth challenge (for those that don’t know, the West Highland Way is a 96 mile walk, taking between 5 and 8 days, on average to complete), I have a separate blog, detailing my progress, and reporting on some of the places I’ve visited (or will be visiting) in the course of my training. I’ll also be updating that blog each day while I’m on the walk (assuming I can get a signal on my phone!), so that people can track my progress. The blog can be found HERE.

Nothing particularly earth shattering has happened since my last blog. The most interesting thing was Butterfly Conservation Scotland’s Members Day at the end of October. Mark Young did a short workshop on Micro moths and how to start going about identifying them. I’m planning on getting some of the books he’s suggested over the winter months, with a view to identifying micros as well as macros next year.

I’ll most likely be bringing the moth trap out of hibernation in March next year, so until then, this is me signing off.

PS: If anyone is interested in what I plan on doing during the winter months, feel free to take a look at my new blog ‘Walking in the Wilds of Scotland’, which I co-author.

Basically, like most people who spend a lot of time in the outdoors, I’ve always tended to wear hiking boots. I’ve recently come into contact with walking shoes, and, well, I really quite like them! first of all, let’s take a look at the shoes in question.

These are the Merrell Chameleon Slam II shoes I’ve recently purchased. Now, I had to compare them to boots in a few different scenarios, just to see if they felt any better or not.

First of all, the shoes themselves. I’ll point out straight away that they are NOT waterproof. They do have a reasonably flexible sole… but it is more rigid than a trainer would be, yet more flexible than a hiking boot. It seems like quite a good compromise to me. They’re also much lighter than boots.

If you do plan on buying some of these, or any other Merrell shoes, please do try them on before you buy them! I’m normally a size 11, but needed to go for a size 12 for these. Apparently, Merrell shoes do tend to size a little on the small side.

Now, the first test I tried was the Elie Chainwalk

Here’s me making a bit of a fool of myself on one of the chains. I can climb up them with no problems at all, but I hate the descents!

http://www.youtube.com/v/EAZ7kvMEJXI?fs=1&hl=en_GB

The shoes worked really well here! the amount of grip in the soles was incredible, and because they were so much lighter than boots, movements felt easier (though you wouldn’t be able to tell that by the video!)

If you include the walk from the car park at the golf course and back over the top, that one was about 5 miles. At the end of it, my feet felt a little sore at the balls of the feet, but I put that down to the socks (I was wearing basic, cheap sports socks)

The next challenge was my daily walk. I’m currently trying to get fit, so I’m going for a walk every day of around 3 and a half miles. I have now taken the shoes on that walk several times (I’ve had the shoes 8 days now). As the walk is for a large part on paved roads and paths, there wasn’t really much to challenge the shoes. However, I’ve been trying to improve my speed on the walk over time, so I’ve been adding a bit of running into it, to get over the most boring parts of the walk quickly… the shoes clearly out performed boots here in pretty much every way, but you would expect that, really.

However, back to my previous comment… these shoes are definitely not waterproof. I did have to wade through a couple of puddles, and my feet got soaked. I suspect during the middle of winter, that would be a big issue! This is the one area where boots continue to outperform shoes. Yes, I could have got waterproof shoes, but my thinking was that a waterproof liner holds water in as well as it holds water out… thus if water got over the top of the shoe, I’d be soaked, and the water would be stuck inside the shoe until I could remove it (And let’s face it, water coming over the top of a shoe is significantly more likely than coming over the top of a boot) The shoes also take quite a while to dry out. Yes, they were dry the next day, so I could use them again, but it took at least 8 hours for them to dry out completely. Not very good if you plan on wearing them for long walks.

Which brings me to my final walk. Glen Tilt.

Above is the walk I did on Saturday. A little over 10 miles, over some variable terrain. I wanted to see how the shoes (and my feet) would cope with the increased duration and variable gradients and terrain.
The shoes performed really well, with a few exceptions.
There was a section of the walk where machinery had been recently used (Atholl Estates had been doing some forestry work), and the terrain was very muddy. I found I was slipping and sliding a lot more with these than I would be with boots.
They did get wet, about half way through, but I was reasonably surprised to find that it didn’t adversely affect my feet too much. The biggest issue, however, was about 3/4 of the way through the walk. When faced with a steady downwards gradient on a paved road, my feet moved forwards a little in the shoe, and created a bit of heel rub. I did end up with a small blister at the end of the walk as a result. Again, I suspect, had I been wearing full walking socks (I was wearing Bridgedale X-Hale Multisport socks), this would have prevented it from happening.

If the My Tracks application on my phone is to be believed, I did just under 12 miles in 3 hours 17 minutes. In reality, it was probably a mile or so less than that, once the GPS errors are taken into account. Still, I’m reasonably confident that I wouldn’t have been able to do the walk as quickly had I been wearing boots.

The lightness of the shoes compared to full on boots shouldn’t be underestimated. I didn’t feel tired at all at the time, despite clearly walking the route at a faster than average pace. (I felt it after being home for an hour or two, though!)

Does this mean I’m a convert to shoes? Definitely… with a few modifications. I’ve bought myself a pair of Sealskinz Trekking socks to give me a little extra padding, and waterproofing. I’ve not tried them out properly yet (I’ve only made sure I can still wear the shoes comfortably with the socks on), but I’m hopeful that they’ll make all the difference for the longer distance walks. I’ll stick with the Bridgedale’s for shorter walks, though.

I’m not a complete convert, though. I plan on walking the West Highland Way next year, and I know that these shoes simply would not be able to cope with the long distance walking combined with the weight of a full pack. I’d feel far more secure wearing boots in that scenario. Also, I doubt I’d be using the shoes to climb any munros during the winter months. Definitely a summer use only item, when in the hills! However, I have no problems using them in the glens all year round, when combined with the waterproof socks.

I think, basically, if you plan on walking at pace, with a light load, either in lowland conditions, or in the summer months, a switch to shoes might just be the best thing for you. However, for backpacking and winter hiking, I’ll stick to boots!

Apologies for the silence on my part for the past month or so… I’ve been really busy of late, and to make matters worse, my moth trap broke!

My ‘waterproof’ ballast for the trap leaked, and it’s taking a while to fix! I may need to replace the ballast completely, sadly. I have, however, managed to re-wire my old moth trap, which isn’t quite as effective (smaller funnel, less caught), and I’ve got that out just now.

There hasn’t really been very much else to report on over the past month or two, since I’ve been without the moth trap. The most interesting thing is in relation to the Comma Butterfly. Last year was the first year that we had seen the species when walking the transect at Cullaloe, and we’ve seen them again this year. The difference is that although we saw them last year, it was only ever individual butterflies. This year, on the other hand, we’ve seen multiples on more than one occasion. I reckon it’s only a matter of time before we find the proof of them breeding in Fife, in the form of caterpillars. I plan on making a concerted effort to find some next year!

I also managed to find a couple of Commas near The Hermitage, in Perthshire… when I reported these, I was told that apparently, they’re spreading further northwards all the time. They’re regularly seen at Blairgowrie, it seems. Still, my records were a first for the 10km square, so I’m happy with that!

Hopefully I’ll have more to report on over the next couple of weeks, now that I have a moth trap in action again.

I parked at the end of the access road to Loch Glow (rather than the car park at the loch edge, which was full with fishermen) and took the walk along. Not surprisingly, after all the recent rain, it was just a little bit on the wet side!

It didnt take me too long (about 15-20 minutes) before I got to Tipperton Moss, where I’d been informed the only Fife colony of Large Heath could be found. It didn’t take me too long before I spotted my first butterfly. A drab orangey thing flew past. It was gone far too quickly for me to get a look at it and definitely too fast for me to get near with the camera. It wasn’t long after that I saw another, similar butterfly. This one I managed to chase (although being a bog, I got pretty wet and filthy in the process!) and came away with these photos:

I was happy enough with that and so off I went. After all, these were butterflies at the right time, in the right habitat. On the way back to the car, I did, however, manage to get a photo of a Small Heath just for comparison when I got home.

Are we noticing the similarities yet?

The downside of the ‘Large Heath’ photos I took is that the butterfly was not very obliging… It clearly didn’t want to sit at the right angle, or it didn’t want to sit at all, so the photos are not the best. When I got home, I began to have my doubts about them… was this a Large Heath or a Small Heath?! I emailed Duncan Davidson, the County Recorder and asked for his opinion.

The result: Inconclusive. We’ve not been able to confirm without a doubt that the photos are Large Heath. Although the likelyhood is that they are, the photo evidence was not very good. Now, Had I looked at the butterfly and paid more attention to the features at the time, rather than trying to get it in shot… we’d have more of an idea. When I was at college, we did a unit on ID – where I was told that it was far better to take a sketch and some field notes than it is to take a photo. I didn’t understand why that would be at the time, but I do now! Photos are great to back up your evidence, but I guess they don’t see everything the eye does… particularly in cases like this.

Yesterday, Duncan braved the weather and went to Tipperton Moss for himself, just to confirm whether the Large Heath are still there or not, and he took the following photos:

These are very clearly Large Heath butterflies. So we have confirmation… I was in the right place, at the right time. So… are my photographs Large Heath?

We’re still not willing to confirm for definite. Looking at the top photo, there’s a very definite dark eye-spot on the lower wing, which isn’t visible on the Small Heath (there’s no black on the ones on the Small Heath)… this suggests it is most likely a Large Heath, but it’s not necessarily enough to be conclusive.

Duncan has sent away the photos to another source for confirmation.

Now… what I’d originally planned when I went in hunt of Large Heath was to report on the size of the population. I clearly can’t do that… but this isn’t just because of the problems noted above. Tipperton Moss is a blanket bog, and as such, if you go there by yourself, you’ll probably not be spending as much time looking for butterflies as you will be looking for safe places to put your feet. To get a proper grasp of the population up there, it’ll take 2 or more people to visit. Hopefully next year we’ll be able to arrange a visit, to get the info.

So… I think i’ll be leaving the camera in its case for a little while and getting the old pencils and field notebook out instead. My drawing is awful, but at least I’ll be able (with the notes written) to confirm ID by that method.

I recently spent a week on Mull, where I had a few objectives in terms of Butterflies and Moths. Specifically, I wanted to put the moth trap out regularly and I wanted to find Slender Scotch Burnet and Transparent Burnet moths.

Now, I left for Mull on the 3rd July, a little concerned, as there had been reports of almost drought conditions on the island. I knew that some places were having to turn away guests due to a lack of water. Luckily, the place I was staying at was ok for water. Sadly, the drought was to be broken…

When I arrived on Mull on Saturday evening, it was dry, but a little bit overcast. When I woke up on Sunday morning, however, it was a totally different story – torrential rain and gale force winds! I think it’s safe to say that there would be no butterflies out that day! I spent that day hiding in the caravan, hoping for the weather to break.

Monday was forecast for showers, some heavy – but with strong winds throughout the day. I pretty much gave up on hunting for butterflies and moths that day, too. I did, however manage to get a couple of walks in, so the day wasn’t a total waste.

To cut a long story short, the weather was more or less awful throughout the week on Mull. There was rain on every single day of my visit. It’s safe to say that I never got the chance to hunt for the specialist moths for Mull.

However, it wasn’t a complete loss. I did manage to put the moth trap out on the Tuesday night. Ok, so the egg boxes I’d left outside the trap were more or less ruined when I got up on Wednesday morning, but the result was worth it. My first ever Garden Tiger moths… well, the first I’d caught in my own trap! Absolutely gorgeous moths, one of which is shown below (I caught 2)

Typically, I’ve lost my list of species caught… I know there was White Ermine, Buff Ermine, True Lovers Knot and a few others.

The weather cleared up on the Friday afternoon, and turned out quite sunny. We decided to go for a walk – specifically the shore walk at Ardmore (as given by Walk Highlands). I’m glad we did, too, as I managed to see two species new to me. Grayling and Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillary.

We started the walk at approx 4pm, and although the walk should only take about 2 hours, it took us over 3 hours, due to stopping and getting photos. I’m pretty chuffed with the Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillary taken below:

This Dark Green Fritillary was also pretty good.

Other species seen on that one trip were Speckled Wood, Ringlet, Meadow Brown and Small Heath. That one walk more or less saved my week from being a disaster! Not bad for the very last day we were there!

Now that I’m back in Fife, I’ll be reporting on things closer to home again – Look out for an update in the next day or two regarding the Large Heath butterfly!

We had agreed that the night in question would be Saturday 12th June

We arrived just before 21:30, as the Bailiff closes the gate to prevent access shortly afterwards. There was a fair bit of cloud in the air, and midgies were plentiful. I was feeling quite hopeful, it has to be said!

We set the trap up near the outflow from the dam, so that it was close to the heather moorland and to the woodland, to try and make the most of the habitat choices. We switched the trap on at 22:30 approximately.

It wasn’t long till the first moth of the night appeared – a Flame Shoulder. I was definitely hopeful at this stage!

Sadly, it seems my hopes were completely unfounded. By the time we decided to give up and go to bed at 23:30, we’d seen one other moth, and it didn’t come close enough to be caught in my net.

We got up at 4am to check to see what was there, and, well, we were more than a little disappointed. The total trap for the night was:

And that was it. I was hopeful of so much more than that. Although, in saying that, the Fox Moth (pictured below) is a first for me, so it wasn’t a complete disappointment!

Now, as you’ll probably have noticed, the Fox Moth above doesn’t look like it is in scrubby heather.. in fact, it is in my garden! I decided to bring some of the moths home to photograph (mostly the pug and micros), because although it was light enough to ID everything at 4am, the camera wasn’t particularly keen on it!

As a result, the Fox Moth has given me 8 small presents, shown below:

And this is the challenge referred to in the title. If these eggs are fertile (and I’ve no reason to suspect otherwise), I am going to attempt to rear them. Fox Moths are notoriously difficult to rear in captivity, mainly due to their need to hibernate during the winter as a caterpillar. I recently read THIS article on the Birdforum website, which I plan on copying, though I plan on using shop-bought heathers and mosses, rather than collecting from the wild.

It definitely could make for an interesting project, and I’ll be extremely happy if i can pull it off. Still, I’ve a while to wait yet – a week or two before the eggs hatch at least!

However, when I’ve been trapping away from home, or when I’ve been paying particular attention to what has been happening in the garden, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of moths don’t find their way into the trap itself. I needed to find a potential solution to that – hence Grahame’s Moth Trap, Mark II!

The moth trap is based around the same principles as the first one, so if you haven’t already, take a look at that post. The big difference is that this one is frankly much easier to make than the last one was!

Paul Batty now offers some DIY bits on his website, as well as the electrics, so for the second trap, I chose the easier option and got bits from him. I bought a complete set of pre-wired electrics for a 22w Actinic system (Unlike previously, where I’d purchased a kit and wired it myself) and a 45cm x 30cm black top-plate with hole (and funnel). Total cost for this: – £54.95 (plus postage)

The only other equipment I required was a box. I used the same type of Ikea box as I had for the previous version of the trap.

Building the trap was infinitely easier. I simply cut a hole in the bottom of the funnel, to allow moths access, then cut a hole into the lid of the box, big enough for the funnel to fit into. In this case, the hole did nt have to be cut to size… it could be quite messy and get away with it.

Once this was done, I mounted the top-plate onto the lid of the box – one perfectly shaped hole in the lid!

Then it was simply a case of drilling holes to mount the 22w tube onto and securing the cable. Job done! One moth trap built!

I’ve not gone into the above with too much detail, as it’s pretty straight forward. It’s also very similar to my original build, but without any of the real hassle.

The problem now is that I had much the same moth trap as my last one. Although the funnel is larger than the original trap (by about 2cm in diameter), the vast majority of moths would still fail to go into the trap. Now, I’ve seen several professional traps, and a lot of home-made ones that work, and the trick seems to be to have vanes. These effectively stop the moth when they fly into them, and encourages them to go down into the hole. Additionally, it creates a smaller space for them to get out of, so once beneath the vanes, it’s easier for them to go into the hole – at least that’s the theory!

A friend of mine had also purchased moth trap equipment from Paul Batty, and included in his equipment was an Aluminium composite sheet. (He’d purchased MV electrics, and this comes with templates to cut out vanes to go round the MV lamp). Luckily, the sheet was larger than he needed, so he gave the leftover piece to me.

The photo below shows half of the vane – I made it 30cm long in total and 11cm high. The holes are 6cm wide and 5cm tall, to go over the 22w tube. In honesty, you could make those holes much smaller, but I chose to err on the side of caution and have larger holes. The two halves slot into each other, creating the vanes.

At that point, it is simply a case of putting the two together and fitting them over the tube. Job done – one set of vanes, ready to try!

I had also spray-painted the lid of the box black, to blend in with the top-plate and provide some darkness for the moths trapped inside, but as you can see, this is quickly peeling off. I guess I need to find a more permanent way of making the trap lid black.

I haven’t yet tried the trap – I’ve only built it this afternoon, but it’s already set up and ready to go. I’ll update this post with the results, once I have them. I’m hoping the combination of larger funnel plus vanes will increase the catch. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!