Recorders Meeting in Birmingham

I thought I'd cheat with the report and copy Ina Smith's that she posted on the Ceredigion blog - with a few minor changes. Thanks Ina.

On Saturday Martin Albertini and I attended the National Moth Recorders’ Meeting in Birmingham. There was a very interesting program of talks on some wide ranging topics from Sweden, Scotland and even Wales!

Mark Young put forward the arguments for and against a national micro-moth recording scheme, a very good idea but for the obvious problems of verification.

Some interesting work being done on producing synthetic pheromones for some of the rarer moths, using Burnet moths as an example.

A talk by Dr Lars Pettersson of Lund University in Sweden, on the rapid range expansion of moths in Sweden. This to some extent echoed the northerly shift of some moth species in Britain.

Other subjects covered were Cinnabar Moths, recording moths in Lakeland and some thoughts on results from the Garden Moths Scheme.

A very good finale was a piece on extreme mothing in Wales by George Tordoff, this included high altitude recording, some of it with a cherry picker!!

There was of course a discussion on the up-coming atlas of Macro-moths and a list of ‘white holes’ was available, should anyone fancy a holiday in an out of the way place, we have the list.  We have no under-recorded squares in Bucks or Berks but there are 3 in Oxon: SP20, SP32 and SP52 with 4, 3 and 1 record respectively.  I can see Mr Wilton already getting his map out.

This was a very enjoyable day - and we both chatted with people we knew and also those that we'd been e-mailing over the year. Martin Harvey was there as was Marc Botham  and a good contingent from north Bucks. If you've never been to one of these, try and make the effort in early 2016, although booking is essential. You can usually scrounge a lift, like I did. Peter Hall