Butterfly Conservation: Highland Branch Newsletter 13

National Moth night, Tannera Mor, the Summer Isles August 2007

Tannera Mor is the largest of the Summer isles, about a mile and half offshore from the mainland. There are no roads, cars, sheep, rabbits or deer on the island. It was our third visit this year (2007). The owners, Bill and Jean Wilder, collected us from the mainland with their boat the Patricia. As well as my Husband, son, two dogs, food, luggage, bagpipes, fishing gear, etc needed to last the 10 day stay was the Robinson moth trap, all piled onto the boat. This time we were staying in Shore Cottage which is on the east side of the island. It is surrounded mostly by heather but has a small enclosed front garden with various shrubs and trees leading down to the sea.

For the first few of days the island was storm bound, the forecast was not too good and I wasn’t sure if I would get the trap out at all. Had I lugged it all that way for nothing?

National moth night was on the 11th and luckily by then the weather had cleared. The night was dry, mild and cloudy so I put the trap out at about 10pm just as it was getting dark. As there was no other light for miles the trap light filled the night sky so I was certain that if there were moths about then they were bound to visit my trap. Very soon there were moths flickering about the garden and just as it was getting properly dark a couple of bats appeared and started scooping up what looked like all the biggest/bestest ones!! The cottage was whitewashed and there were moths sitting in the light on the wall. Soon there were moths all over the place. My husband, fortified by a large dram and wearing my butterfly net over his head to combat the marauding midges came out to help. Taking a pot he spotted a bordered beauty on the wall and deftly covered it. Delighted with himself and holding his hand over the top of the pot to keep it in, he came over to show me. But as he lifted off his hand to give me a better view, out flew the wee beauty, straight up and into the path of a swooping bat. Thankfully by midnight the bats had disappeared, it must have been the best feed they’d had in a long while! We continued to gather up the stragglers from the ground and off the walls until 2am then headed off to bed.

In the morning I had to cover up well to avoid being eaten alive by midges while I gathered all the moths into pots. I had caught 123 moths, 30 different species. Coffee-washed Bordered Beauty. Photo by Fiona Hay.

Coffee-washed Bordered Beauty. Photo by Fiona Hay.

It was not to be the day for the bordered beauty however, as when I was trying to photograph a brightly coloured specimen it flew up and off, straight into my cold cup of coffee. I quickly rescued it and although it did dry out and was later released, it had lost all of its beautiful orange colour and was now a wishy-washy, peachy hue!!

Bill and Jean came round to see what I had caught. There had been moths trapped a number of years before but they didn’t have a record of what had been caught so they were fascinated to see the different species we had. They are going to use my results as part of a talk they are giving to the nature society later in the year. My personal favourite was a micro moth, a beautiful, fragile mother of pearl, aptly named it would have made a lovely brooch.

So despite all the effort to get the trap out to the island it really was worthwhile, and one saving grace, there was power on hand from the cottage and we didn’t need to lug the generator!