Dark Skies wildlife events
These events ran on 7th June and 12th July.
Please see our report below for an overview of how they went.
Dark Skies Events at Bosavern Community Farm
Report from the 7th June event
The first Dark Skies event at Bosvern was extremely popular with over 25 folks coming along, to sample the delights of wildlife out and about at night. The event started with a tour around with Nick Taylor, looking at the various habitats and features around the site, and an introduction to the aims of the farm from Katie Kirk. We talked about the aims of the Dark skies park too at the same time. Whilst exploring the trail we set up some portable moth traps so that attendees could come back in the morning if they fancied to see what was around after midnight.
The main event of the evening was setting up the Mercury vapour bulb lamp, and gathering around to see what would arrive out of the dark. We weren’t disappointed, as the evening got darker more and more species of beautiful moths arrived. by midnight we had been visited by at least 30 species of moths, including the lovely Elephant Hawk Moth, the Wonderfully coloured Peach Blossom Moth, and the ethereally beautiful White Plume Moth. A fascinating evening.
The following morning 8 keen folks returned, and were rewarded with even more species, 35 in all, in the portable traps. Perhaps the star moth was the incredibly camouflaged Buff Tip, doing a perfect imitation of a broken birch twig.
The evening revealed some wonderful creatures, giving us a glimpse into how important our dark skies are for many kinds of wildlife in Penwith.
Report from 12th July event
This weekend’s event went really well I think, despite the weather looking decidedly dodgy before hand. The moths turned out to be spectacular once again, with seven Elephant Hawk moths and a Privet Hawk moth being the evening stars, a Buff Tip and a Garden Tiger the morning favourites, and lots of small brown jobs to keep me working!
Think everyone loved it. I understand that one couple went into the shop afterwards and gave a nice donation to Bosavern to say thanks.
So a fascinating evening and morning was had by all, it seemed to me. Thanks to FR for setting up the marker posts before hand. I’ve put them back in the tool store
Gallery
Peppered Moth
Small China-mark Moth
Grass Emerald Moth
Hawk Moth
Tiger Moth
Peach Blossom Moth
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