Wildlife Event - Moths & Butterflies
September 2024
Bailies of Bennachie 🦋Wildlife event on Moths & Butterflies 🦋 was held on Saturday 31st August.
A lovely morning was had in an informal and relaxed setting in David's wildlife garden/woods. Good interest and camaraderie amongst the participants. The catches gave us a good spread of species associated with the various habitats, identified for us by Aberdeenshire Ranger Helen Rowe.
The moths were trapped alive using light traps set out over night and then released after identification. 3 traps were located close to Donview surrounded by oak woodland, and 2 others were positioned close to pine woodland and more mixed broadleaves.
The records will all be submitted to the North East Biological Records Centre and add to our knowledge of the wildlife interest of Bennachie. After finishing we checked out a nearby buddleia bush and saw at least 40 peacock butterflies, 3 or 4 red admirals and 3 comma butterflies. The latter have started to colonise the North East of Scotland over the last 4 or 5 years. While exciting to see this happening, the cause is less happy as it is a sign of climate change raising our winter and summer temperatures. If you missed this event, we plan to organise a similar meeting next year at a different time of year to complement the findings made at the end of August this year and in May last year. Different species have differing flight periods.
Helen reported that the moth highlight from near Donview was the capture of a number of Brindled Greens. The species is an oakwood specialist. The catches from the east side of Bennachie included the Buff Footman and Mouse moth which are less commonly seen species. All sightings were recorded and can be seen on the image
#moths #butterflies #wildlife
