National Moth Recorders' Meeting, Birmingham 2015

Yesterday Tony and I attended the National Moth Recorders’ Meeting in Birmingham. There was a very interesting program of talks on some wide ranging topics from Sweden, Scotland and even Wales!

Mark Young put forward the arguments for and against a national micro-moth recording scheme, a very good idea but for the obvious problems of verification.

Some interesting work being done on producing synthetic pheromones for some of the rarer moths, using Burnet moths as an example.

A talk by Dr Lars Pettersson of Lund University in Sweden, on the rapid range expansion of moths in Sweden. This to some extent echoed the northerly shift of some moth species in Britain.

Other subjects covered were Cinnabar Moths, recording moths in Lakeland and some thoughts on results from the Garden Moths Scheme.

A very good finale was a piece on extreme mothing in Wales by George Tordoff, this included high altitude recording, some of it with a cherry picker!!

There was of course a discussion on the up-coming atlas of Macro-moths and a list of ‘white holes’ was available, should anyone fancy a holiday in an out of the way place we have the list.  We have no unrecorded squares in vc46, but we do have three under-recorded squares listed.  Two of these are of no concern as they are mostly in the sea, one off Bird Rocks, New Quay and the other off Ynyslas can only be considered land when the tide is out!  SN87, beyond Cwmystwyth, is the third under-recorded square, and this is shared by two other vice counties. If anyone fancies a trip up there, or knows someone who lives in the area a few more records would be welcomed.

This was a very enjoyable day - time to spend money on moth books and equipment as well as meet up with friends and fellow mothers both old and new.

Ina.