Artist and moth advocate Katherine Pogson writes:
As part of an art-research exhibition in Bethnal Green, I was invited by Phytology to run a community moth trapping evening at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve. This took place on 21 August.
The evening went very well in terms of audience participation, we had twelve people including three children; a mixture of local people, people with environmental backgrounds, and some new to London and/or the area which was pleasing. One family drove in from Suffolk especially for the event.
The trapping itself was rather challenging, due to the equipment being chewed by the reserve’s foxes. Consequently, our species list was rather small. We did catch eight species of moths: The Rustic, Square-spot Rustic, Common Rustic, Large Yellow Underwing, Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Mother-of-Pearl, Mint Moth and Light Brown Apple Moth. I also brought some moths caught in my home trap, so there was plenty to look at – of course I took them back to release where they were caught.
I regard this as a trial run and, if we do further moth trapping sessions, we’ll know to keep watch on our traps to keep the foxes away.
Header photo: Mint Moth by John Archer. Click photos below to enlarge
Moth evening participants (Katherine Pogson)
Examining a moth (Katherine Pogson)
Square-spot Rustic (Gino Brignoli)
Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing (Katherine Pogson)
Light Brown Apple Moth (Katherine Pogson)
Mother of Pearl (Katherine Pogson)
