Our Moth and Butterfly Course on Saturday identified 58 species of macro 
moths and 5 species of butterfly on North Meadow and the surrounding area. The course was sponsored by the Court’s Heritage Lottery Grant.
Our course tutor David Brown started with an explanation of the differences between moths and butterflies. Butterflies usually have ‘club-shaped’ antennae while most moths have feathery or tapering ones. Also butterflies normally hold their wings vertical at rest and moths hold them flat. It is largely an arbitrary distinction we use in the UK as they are all Lepidoptera, a family of insects with 2 pairs of wings covered in often very colourful scales.
On Friday night David put out 7 light traps to collect a sample of moths for us to inspect on Saturday morning. As we went through the light traps we were amazed at the huge variety of beautiful of moths which we don’t normally see. The majority of moths fly at night, unlike butterflies which we see during daylight hours. The gallery below shows a few of the moths we discovered, click on the pictures to see a larger image.
David has been studying moths for many years and has detailed knowledge of every species. This is quite a feat as there are about 900 macro moth species in the UK. Many more than the 60 UK species of butterflies with which we are much more familiar.
After lunch we walked around North Meadow looking for butterflies. Although 23 species have been recorded on North Meadow they do not all fly at the same time of year. We saw 2 newly emerged and very fresh Comma butterflies, and some rousting, very well camouflaged Specked Wood butterflies in the hedge. As we walked, several Green Veined White and Small White flew passed us and we were treated to a Small Tortoiseshell on the path.
We returned to the Thames Hall to review our day and release the moths unharmed. 
Wildlife records are very important for research and conservation, species records from the day will be submitted to the Wiltshire County Moth Recorder via iRecord.
We must thank our tutor David Brown for sharing his enthusiasm, knowledge and vast experience with us and for making our moth and butterfly course such an enjoyable day.
Next year we are running a 2 day Moths and Butterflies course on Sat 11th/Sun 12th June. We plan to visit Edge common NNR and Daneway Banks NR within the Cotswold Commons and Beechwoods AONB to see more butterflies including the recently introduced Large Blue Butterfly.
