Marsh Mallow Moth

Just a quick note about our star attraction at the last Sussex Moth Group Hastings Branch meet up. We met at Hastings Garden Centre/Pebsham Marshes for a moth trapping event on Saturday 26 August. We had a good catch with 87 species, the star attraction being a Marsh Mallow Moth (Hydraecia osseola). After some discussion with both Colin Pratt (our county moth recorder), and Sean Clancy the man in charge of the conservation of this endangered moth, we are pretty sure we have an idea of what this means at this point. Although it would be fantastic to find a new colony, its likely either a wandering female looking for another good stand of Marsh Mallow (Althaea officinalis) food plant, or even possibly a migrant from Europe. We'll obviously have to wait and see if future records appear, but for now a nice find.

National Moth Night @ Brede High Woods

The Sussex Moth Group is hosting loads of great events for National Moth Night, which actually runs from today 3 July, 2014 to 5 July, 2014. The Hastings Branch is going to host one of the events at Brede High Woods Friday 4 July, 2014.  We are meeting at 8:45pm at Brede High Wood car park (first one coming from Broad Oaks) [TQ 8042 2061].  The target species this year is Woodland moths, so we are sure to see some fantastic moths.

If you would like to come along and see some of the moths caught feel free to join us.  We'll be mothing until around 00:30 and there are some spectacular species to be found. 

Hope some of you can make it

More Guestling Moths

On June 7th the Sussex Moth Group, Hastings Branch went back out to Guestling Wood run by the Woodland Trust, with an MV trap in addition to the two actinics we had on 25 May.  The MV Trap was run by Gerry Balcikonis and his moth helper 8 year old Callum Sims.  We had a great catch of 54 species and 326 moths counted.  We had good numbers (12) Waved Carpet and also good number of Little Emerald (pictured below) which was new for me to see.

We look forward to running traps in the wood again at a different time of year, but the main reason I wanted to make this post was the outstanding job of Callum Sims.  He has been coming along to our moth nights for two years and is a fantastic future naturalist.  He helped with the counts and IDing and is very interested in nature.  He informed me that he has on going studies of nature in his back garden and "Really loves nature!". When I worry that kids today are not interested in getting out in nature this reminds me that many of them just need a chance to get out and catch 'the bug'. Well done Callum, we look forward to having you again.

Bohemia Walled Garden Heritage Open Day

The Sussex Moth Group, Hastings Branch will be holding a moth night on Saturday, 14 September 2013, we'll meet up at 6:45 at the Courthouse Parking area off Bohemia Road (TQ 807 097). 

We will be running moth traps if anyone is interested in coming by, we'll also be having a moth talk the next day for the Bohemia Walled Garden Open Day at 11:00am.

National Moth Night @ South Saxons Wetlands

The Sussex Moth Group,  Hastings Branch will have a public event for National Moth night. Details on poster below, feel free to steal that and email to anyone you think maybe interested in popping around to meet some moths.