National Moth Night - 23rd September

K and B were really excited about staying up late for this, not so much for spotting moths, just for staying up past their usual bedtime! Information on the event is here, also we used this website to set our moth "trap" (scroll down alittle to heading "how to attract moths").

So ... as soon as it got dark we dug out an old white sheet and pegged it to the washing line and secured it with bricks. To assist the moths, we even placed an egg carton on the floor in case they felt like staying for the night. Actually Allie found this very quickly and settled himself on it for a bit of shut eye!

Everyone mucked in to light the fire basket using all the left over kindling, old shoes (which burn surprisingly well) and a couple of logs.

We set a blanket on the floor, a few games to amuse us, some drinks and a good strong torch to shine onto the sheet, and waited ... and waited ... and waited! Luckily it was a warm evening with cloud cover to keep the warmth so we stayed out until the kids grew too tired to continue with their hopeful moth identification. It was such a perfect night that I reckon the moths had decided to party elsewhere as we did not spot, or hear, one single moth on our brightly lit white sheet, or even elsewhere in the garden! However, we did identify one cranefly (yes, just one surprisingly), and another of those rather yucky large brown crawly garden spiders, similar to the one B had spotted in the kitchen last week! K gave up at 9.15, B gave up at 9.45! We gave up at 10.00!

I'll be keeping a watch on the Moth Night website to see if others had a better turnout than us!

(oh, and we didn't see any of these either!)