Moth Safari

I've not had much time for blogging recently as I've been out day and night. Doing things like bat-watching and also a moth survey. We went out in the evening with a special box which has a funnel at the top and some old cardboard egg boxes in the bottom and we fixed up a torch and turned this on just after dark. The next morning we went back to see what we would find.On a warm and still night it would be full of insects of various kinds. Unfortunately, May has not been so warm as April was and some of the nights have been quite windy. But we have found and recorded lots of different moths. Here's a pic I took of a poplar hawk moth after we had removed it from the box and put it on a suitable tree:

The photo is not too sharp as there was a strong breeze and its wings were fluttering quite a bit.On that occasion we also found quite a few beautiful white ermines, though all quite small ones and several other common species. 

This was in quite a marshy area so we got things like caddis flies and other insects too, all of which we released - even the biting ones!

In the wet marshy ground I also spotted this:

The beautiful Marsh Cinquefoil with its flower heads showing an almost translucent purple in the pale light. Further out - too far to photograph - I saw the elusive Marsh Andromeda with leaves like Rosemary but flowers like Bell Heather.

Nature is so full of  deep and mysterious things.