Remember to submit your moth records

Jan and I been trapping moths on and off for a year or three now. And for those of you who don’t know, we have a small garden right in the centre of Southampton. Surrounded by pubs, clubs, street lights and neon. We think we’re doing well if we get half a dozen moth records (or sometimes one moth) – let alone half a dozen species.

Nevertheless, over the weekend we decided to submit our records to the National Moth Recording Scheme. After all, citizen science is made up of millions of individual records. It took a little time, but all our records from our little garden are now adding to the sum of human knowledge about the distribution of moths in the UK.

Willow Beauty – Peribatodes rhomboidaria

And much to our surprise we submitted records for 145 different species. Not earth shattering. I know some moth trappers who wouldn’t be overly surprised to see 145 species from one evening’s trapping. But from our little garden, a little oasis of wild nature in the brick and concrete desert of Bevois Valley, 145 species are records worth knowing about.

If you’ve been making notes of the moths you see in your locality, make sure you submit the records. Every little helps.

NATIONAL MOTH RECORDING SCHEME ONLINE

You can use this system to enter, store, map and analyse your own moth records. You’ll also be able to see what other recorders have observed in your area and around the country, as well as contributing your records automatically to the National Moth Recording Scheme.

Moth records entered online will be passed to the appropriate County Moth Recorders for verification and incorporation into local datasets, before becoming part of the main National Moth Recording Scheme database. So you will not need to send your records separately to County Moth Recorders – the online recording system will do it all for you.

To start moth recording online, simply register here.

These are just a few of the moths we have recorded….

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This is the complete list of micro and macro moths (it shows 146 rather than 145 because of the inclusion of one aggregate as well as the two individual species):