Amazing Annual Moth Count for Bugs & Blooms Event

Ruby Tiger

Huge gratitude to the passionate, dedicated & generous Frank Johns who was our resident Moth expert over night on Tuesday and for most of the morning on Wednesday to meet our Bugs & Blooms visitors and introduce them to some of our night-flying insects.

Cornwall's Premier Moth Man, Frank Johns

Frank and his friend Graham sat up until gone 1am watching the moths flying in, attracted by the mercury vapour lamp that he set up above a large white sheet. A few of us joined them, eager with tiny pots in hand, to capture specimens so that Frank could ID them and record them. We then set up another trap which was then left until sunrise. Frank was up before us at about 5am already recording and choosing which species to save for our visitors to look at later. We hope his cattle back at the farm forgave him for staying away all night and morning!

We had between 80 and 90 species visit us overnight and, thankfully, a bit of cloud-cover meant that the moon didn't take too many away from us for viewing.

Recording species such as moths is great for us to see how our habitats are fairing as every moth species has a corresponding food plant for it's larvae and some, not all, flying adults, need nectar food sources too.

Above from left to right: Swallow Prominent (so camouflaged against the cherry bark, but larvae of both prominents we found commonly feed on poplar which were growing close to our traps), Small Magpie, Pale Prominent, Oak Eggar (we had both male & female), Lesser Broad-Bordered Yellow Underwing (wide shot and close up (look at that face!!), Brimstone & Copper Underwing.

Apple Ermine - Not quite the smallest moth we trapped, but very small. It makes sense we had a few of these when we have so many apple trees on site!

It also attracted species for which moth larvae are their hosts; namely Ichneumon wasps which lay eggs inside larvae which then burst out and hatch, killing the larvae (gruesome!!) but all part of nature's rich ecosystem and the awareness of the importance of every connection in nature and the symbiosis of it all.

Frank recorded everything we captured. The photo below is the back page of our records when we opened the other two traps that we had set - one a 6W heath trap; this is Kehelland Trust's Trap that we were able to buy with grant funding from both St. Austell Brewery & Farming In Protected Landscapes (thank you!), the other trap was Frank's 15W Actinic (UV light) trap.

Frank has a lifetime of moth knowledge, having started his fascination & recording of moths aged just 12! It was such a privilege to be able to share an evening with him and his friend, Graham, learning as we went and developing our own obsession with these amazing and abundant creatures - did you know that, whilst we have just around 60 butterfly species in the UK, we have a whopping 2.5 000 moth species! We even have more day-flying moths than we do butterflies. These beautiful creatures often go un-noticed, so we feel it's really important to both record them and introduce people to them in daylight to showcase the incredible beauty & variety there is and the importance of habitat biodiversity & preservation.

We hope all those who came along early to Bugs & Blooms enjoyed meeting this relatively tiny collection of moths. They are very amenable insects too with many visitors being able to get a really close look at them. We had some budding young nature experts - some of whom already knew soooo much about insects it was very inspiring!

As always, our photographing during our Bugs & Blooms event was a bit poor, so we really hope that visitors who came and enjoyed the day, might tag us on the socials and share their experience with others.

Thanks to everyone who came along to Bugs and Blooms, plus all the Kehelland Staff, Trainees & Volunteers who helped out and of course to Frank for giving us so much time and knowledge.