20th September,2009.

Each year in the UK an event is held called the National Moth Night. This is organized by Atropus ( a journal dedicated to the study of lepidoptera and dragonflies ) and Butterfly Conservation, the national voluntary organization campaigning for moths and butterflies and their habitats.

This year the trapping dates were the 18th and 19th September. The dates change each year so that a different part of the season is covered for recording purposes. Since commencing in 1998 the scheme has enjoyed increasing success. Many reports have been received from new areas, records of scarce species generated and, in , 2008 records were received from Ireland of White Prominent, a moth which had not been recorded for 70 years.

The reason two dates are chosen is to accomodate the possibility of bad weather. Having looked at the forecasts I decided that Saturday the 19th, into the 20th , would be best. How wrong can you be? A particularly heavy rain shower occurred after about an hour , and others occurred during the night, so conditions were far from perfect. In summary, my contribution to the exercise was the princeley number of TWO moths, both of which I'd recorded before. Such are the pleasures of science!!!