Monthly Meeting December 2009

Report from the December 2009 meeting.

14 Members attended this meeting .

Susan sent her apologies and best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to members.

The evening did not start in too bright a fashion, with the lights failing a number of times before eventually deciding to stay on. It was then found that the computer would not run the prepared slide show. So we returned to the normal format of having around the table discussion of what had been seen / recorded over the last month.

Jan

Again Jan is seeing a number of moths / moth wings in puddles, a definitive answer has yet to be found why these keep occuring.

Les

Les returned a copy of "South" he had borrowed from the library. Since the last meeting he has recorded 14 species, which included Scarce Umber, December moth, Winter moth, November moth, Brick and Shuttle Shaped Dart. He had also produced an Excel spreadsheet of the flight periods of all VC22 macro moths. Finally he reminded members of the National Moth Recording Scheme meeting taking place in Birmingham in January.

Sarah

No moths to report but Sarah did bring in a newspaper article regarding a unusual moth seen by a young girl.

Tony

Four species recorded three of which were, Feathered Thorn, Winter Moth and December Moth.

Roger

Brought in two exhibits the first a rare form of the Sprawler, which was shown, with an example of the normal form, the second was a live Green Arches. Both exhibits were circulated around the table. Roger had run a trap for nine nights since the last meeting and recorded seventeen species, Winter, November and December Moths, Streak and Feathered Thorn were among those recorded.

Grahame

updated the members on the progress of The National Moth Recording Scheme. At the last count there were 7.7 million records on the database from 98 vice counties. He also informed members about a Leaf Miners Workshop at Aldershot Military Museum, which is being held on Saturday 27^th March 2010 starting at 10.30am. The cost is £10 per person and prior booking with the museum staff is essential.

Roy

Has not had the opportunity to trap for the last month or more but did update members on the following points. (1) He is now able to put the notes straight onto the new website so the existing site will no longer be updated.. (2) The old site will be run down when the present subscription runs out in March 2010.

On behalf of all members he thanked Nick for the work he has put in on the Micro Moth book project.

A few other notes he mentioned were, meetings through the year had been well attended especially the August meeting, most of the meetings achieving 14 or more members.

From notes he had taken he felt that numbers of moths, with a few exceptions, were down on previous years although the number of species was slightly up.

He also felt that the number of members attending field trips was down, possibly due to changes in the method of communications this year. Discussions will take place on whether this can be rectified.

Lastly a date for the programme and diaries, National Moth Night is on the 15^th May 2010. The theme is Bat Detecting and Moth Recording.