It probably saves some poor PhD student travelling the country beating Cypress trees with a butterfly net. I really hope that all these recording systems start to integrate a bit better soon. There is quite a lot of sharing going on but having one central hub for it all would make it a lot easier.
yep totally agree, I record all mine on Obsidentify as an ecologist friend recommended it, but there seem to be umpteen different ones that could all benefit from sharing databases
iNaturalist has an amazing AI system for identifying things without having to trawl through various guides. It's not always right but there's plenty of experts on there who check and correct things. Apparently it's now sharing some records with iRecord and others. I need to check with the county moth recorder if they're happy to pull records from there.
My trapping was a bit lackluster last night for some reason. I thought conditions were perfect but very few moths bothered to turn up. Luckily five of them were new species for the garden so quality over quantity I'll try and add photos later.
Another fairly dull night here. I went to bed at about 1am and there was only one moth. Luckily I left it running over night and ended up with 13 moths of 11 species, 3 of which were new ones for me. The highlights were two amazing Poplar Hawk Moths:
and a Muslin Moth, which is one of the understated beauties of the moth world.
as well as this Scalloped Hazel
So eight new moths this week along with the Ghost Slug makes me very happy and has put my garden list at 499 species now. I'm going to have to go hunting for that one extra just to tip it over to 500.
Could you have a local exhibition of moth photos? Some are so very beautiful - fully works of art. I don't think most people know anything about them - info-art!
Muslin moths are one of my faves @wild edges had one this morning, never heard of or seen a ghost slug though!
they are much maligned @Fire because we often only see them flapping around in the house, but for me they wipe the floor with butterflies when it comes to looks
Ok I was wrong. I uploaded this moth to iNat and someone with more knowledge than me assures me that it's a Rustic Shoulder-Knot. So many of these brown Noctuidae look the same to me but I haven't recorded this one before which makes it the 9th new moth species this week. Species 500 (and moth 191) for the garden.
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our first Light Brocade
That caterpillar is saluting
Bee x
A single bee creates just one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
they are much maligned @Fire because we often only see them flapping around in the house, but for me they wipe the floor with butterflies when it comes to looks