News

Batty about wildlife

(30.05.2009)

On Saturday 30th May the third annual Bats, Owls and Moths event took place in Waunfawr Park, Crosskeys to give a taster of the wildlife around at night.

Dave Cooksey from the Welsh Owls and Wildlife Sanctuary in Treowen started the proceedings with an informative talk about the owls of the world. The Tawny Owl in Dave’s hand is a common British owl and is the one you may hear hooting and screeching at night near your home.

Dave brought some owl pellets, which are the regurgitated indigestible bit of the owl’s food. Dissecting these showed that the owls had been eating voles and mice.

Vikram Yahd then set up a telescope and showed how to safely look for sunspots by projecting an image of the sun onto a sheet of white paper, as you must never look directly at the sun through a telescope. The moon was up too and looked stunning through the telescope, all the craters on the surface were a new sight to many of the audience.

Richard Dodd from the Valleys Bat Group gave a talk about the bats of the world and of South Wales. At the end of the talk Richard produced some bat detectors, devices that allow you to hear the calls made by bats while they fly around looking for food. During the next half an hour we heard three species, Pipistrelle, our smallest bat, Brown Long-eared, a medium sized bat, and Noctule, which is our largest bat.

Eventually we got around to the moths and Martin Anthony from Monmouthshire Moth and Butterfly Group set up a moth light to attract nighttime insects and though it was getting late some people stayed to see what would appear.

Maybug

Green Silverlines

Being May we were soon surrounded by Maybugs or Cockchafers. These bugs spend up to three years underground eating the roots of grasses and emerge from April to June often flying into patio doors at night. Following that one of the most stunning moths to be drawn to the light was this Green Silver-lines, which as a caterpillar had probably been feeding on the trees in the park.

Next year the event is being planned a little later in the year, September. This will mean that dusk will be earlier so hopefully we can see far more moths at a decent time.