Do you enjoy keeping records of the moths you find in your garden? In the south west area we have about 50 recorders in the Garden Moth Scheme. The Garden Moth Scheme has about 300 recorders nationally. In 2009 40 completed spreadsheets for the SW were received with 73,279 moths.
The ‘south west area’ is huge covering the Scillies to Gloucestershire and across to Dorset . I am keen to recruit more recorders in our area as we need lots of recorders to cover such a large area. The more recorders in the scheme the better the statistical analysis will be.
The scheme involves regular trapping on one night a week counting the ‘common’ moths only; 270 species plus 4 aggregate species are on the list for 2010. The numbers are entered on a spreadsheet for each week. This year some recorders have extracted the data direct from map-mate at year end but most still enter them separately on a spreadsheet.
You don’t need a big garden and beginners as well as experts are welcome. There is a chat site for help with ID issues, discussion and photographs. If you may be interested in joining please contact me either by phone or email frandavis@lineone.net (I use my wife’s email) or 01326 250171 or look at the Garden Moth Scheme website. There was an article in Atropos on the Garden Moth Scheme in the Autumn 09 volume – no 38.
We encourage our recorders to send all their records to their county recorder.
There is plenty of feedback and I would be delighted to email any Cornish recorder the latest newsletters for our area and nationally, as well as details of the scheme.
The recording scheme is divided in two periods summer and winter. The next summer scheme starts on March 5th 2010.
