Garden Moths 2012

Anyone one interested in giving this a go?

Garden Moth Scheme

Suitable for beginners and ALL gardens. Some participants only have a balcony.

This is an annual survey of moths in gardens covering Britain and Ireland.

It requires running a moth trap overnight and recording most of contents the following morning once a week from March to Nov. Up to 9 weeks with no more than 3 in a row can be missed. This means that one can start near end of March having missed the first 3 weeks. So there is still time to get organised.

Requirements, moth trap, guide book....enthusiasm and a willingness to learn

The last 2 are easy and cost nothing

The guide book is relatively straight froward, but will cost in the order of €30-€40
Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland 2nd edition
Waring , Townsend & Lewington. (link to publisher) about half way down.

There is a concise version which has the same plates, but in my opinion, the full version is worth it for the extra meaningful info, but if the budget cannot stretch the concise version will do.

Moth traps not near as straight forward and unless you go a DIY option, can cost a pretty penny cent and even then, its hard to do it under €50. The issue is electrics and out door environment.

A moth trap is basically a light source and a retaining box/bucket etc. The box is often the DIY part and the light source is often sourced from specialist moth trap supplier. One of my traps uses fish tank electrics with the control unit in a plastic lunch box type container.

See guide to Moth Trapping includes plans for building your own trap
and Guide to Bulbs

and see here for list of moth trap suppliers

I'm hopeful that Littlebug and Half-cocked may be interested in joining the 15 or so currently participating in Ireland, but maybe there are others?

One last thing is, that taking photos of the moths and uploading them to internet will be really helpful with regard identifying them.

Any queries, just ask away....