Happy New Year & Moth traps

[ScottD]

Hi folks,

Trust that you are all well, fully recovered from the festivities & looking forward to an exciting & successful mothing 2015.

1. For your info: over the Winter the branch has bought another 2 6W WatDon bucket traps & associated equipment to act as starter kits. Main intention is to lend them out as kickstarters to people who are interested in mothing but unsure that they will like it enough to buy their own traps. However, they will also hopefully be available for other uses too.
Similarly, we have restored to working condition 2 AngLeps 15W Heath traps.
If you have something that you might like to borrow 1/some for please get in touch.

2. Spurred on by Ron I'm also playing around with some DIY attempts at building traps & as suggested in 1 or 2 threads I think that I will ask Scott Shanks if he can set up a part of the forum specifically for discussing equipment. If he can I shall then move all the related threads there assuming that that is what the majority want.

P.S. we hope to be arranging a Mid-summer Moth Madness/Mania/Mayhem etc. etc. night on Inchcailloch in Loch Lomond. I've been lucky enough to trap there with the National Park Rangers a couple of times - usually we have had 4-5 traps out but there are so many different habitats that we would love to get 10+ to cover more. Again, if you think that you may be interested please get in touch.

[ron]

A belated Happy New Year to you all,

[ScottD]

What you say may well be true, Ron, but if so it is simply a reflection of the general situation. If you speak to any of our Vice-County Moth Recorders it is frightening how few regular recorders they have - often able to be counted on only one hand!
The majority of the current branch committee run their own moth traps so are pro-moth & as a branch we certainly spend considerably more per year to promote & support moth recording than butterflies (e.g. witness the 4 traps mentioned above).

[IainH]

Hi Scott,

That all sounds very interesting and productive! I agree that a dedicated equipment section would be a good idea: because several of the forum’s members have experimented with (and even constructed!) different traps, such a forum would probably amass a lot of interesting posts. I agree with Ron that there aren’t large numbers of people posting, but I think it only takes 2 or 3 regular posters to make a very interesting and useful forum.

Iain