Latest news with #moths
BBC News
5 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
Winchester school children help launch Big Butterfly Count 2025
People are being urged to count the butteries and moths they see to help experts assess the "butterfly emergency".Conservationists and students from St Swithun's School in Winchester gathered on Magdalen Hill Down in Hampshire to mark the start of the 24-day Big Butterfly Count Saville from Butterfly Conservation, which runs the project, said the health of butterfly populations was a "really good indicator" of how well other wildlife was doing."If you don't see butterflies then you should be worried and we should be taking action to improve the natural world," he said. Last year's butterfly count yielded concerning results, with low numbers prompting Butterfly Conversation to declare an "emergency". The event runs from 18 July to 10 are encouraged to choose a spot and count the butterflies and moths they see there for 15 minutes per day, logging it on the website or via the app."Then our data scientists will get those numbers and crunch the numbers," said Dr Dan Hoare from Butterfly Conservation."It's a way of tracking the state of nature every year, reacting to the kind of wild weather rollercoaster that we have now."There are hopes that, with the warm weather, this year's count could be more positive."It's looking really promising," said Dr Hoare. And it is not just about butterflies, according to site manager Fiona Scully."Moths are often underrated but they're still very important for pollination, and there's so many more moths - there's 2,500 species of moth, which vastly outweighs the number of butterflies," she said."They're doing a very important job of pollination, and they're also incredibly important in our food chain... they're really needed to support other animals." You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X, or Instagram.
BBC News
7 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
Pollinating insect count for City of London
Bees, butterflies and moths are being counted across the City of London on Thursday to document the state of insect Annual Pollinator Count aims to track pollinator populations in a bid to learn more about the variety of species in the square mile, and their role in the organised by charity Pollinating London Together, will take place in Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden, St Paul's Festival Garden and Inner Temple can take part in the count by downloading the FIT app to register which pollinators they spot in any green space in the square mile.
CTV News
16-07-2025
- Science
- CTV News
Abundance of moths in central Alberta
Residents in central Alberta are capturing images of a large number of moths. An expert says the insects exist in 20 year cycles, and the last outbreak was in the 90's.
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: Hunting for a sooty anomaly among the razzle-dazzle
As we swelter through the meadow, our heat-loving companions bask on knapweed and field scabious, stirring every few seconds to chase off rivals or woo potential mates. The dark green fritillaries and feisty marbled whites command our attention with their dramatic and intricate wing markings, while small heaths, skippers, ringlets and meadow browns provide the butterfly chorus. Distracted by the razzle-dazzle, I've forgotten that we're hunting for a sooty anomaly in the summer meadow. With its penchant for flying in bright sunshine, the chimney sweeper could be mistaken for a butterfly, but is, in fact, a day-flying moth. It's one of about 130 macro-moths in the UK that take to the wing during daylight hours, more than twice the number of butterfly species. Many exhibit vivid colouration or striking patterns, such as the cinnabar, emperor, scarlet tiger or hornet moths. In contrast, the chimney sweeper has no patterning on its black body save for a white margin on the forewings, and it keeps a low profile, alighting on grass stems or making short flights around the white umbel flowers of pignut, its larval food plant. Today, its profile is so low that we fail to see it at all. Instead, I notice a papery sail high on a grass stem by the path. Inside the cocoon is a pupa in which a lemon and black caterpillar is metamorphosing into another day-flying moth: a six-spot burnet. Once we've seen the first sail, every other grass stem in the meadow seems to hoist its own cocoon and a fleet of burnets is launched. Some stems host caterpillars waiting to pupate, while others display empty vessels where parasitic flies or wasps have consumed the larvae, then vacated through the cocoon wall. A quick calculation suggests that if we're looking at an acre and a half of meadow with eight or nine cocoons per square metre, there might be as many as 50,000 burnet moths coalescing in front of us. After a fortnight or so in their silken cases, they'll emerge with one purpose – the continuation of their thriving colony – a yearly commemoration of the forgotten concept of abundance. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Tiny melodies': musician uses moths' flight data to compose piece about their decline
They are vital pollinators who come out at night, but now moths have emerged into the bright light of day as co-creators of a new piece of music – composed using the insects' own flight data. Ellie Wilson composed Moth x Human in a protected habitat on Parsonage Down in Salisbury, Wiltshire. She assigned each of the 80 resident moth species a different sound, which was triggered when it landed on her monitor. Around the automated melody created by the moths, she composed music for live violin, cello, trombone, piano and synths. Wilson will be interviewed and the piece performed twice, at London's Southbank Centre on 5 July as part of the New Music Biennial. 'I wanted to compose a piece of music that was, in part, created by the insects themselves,' said Wilson. 'The moths randomly created these little tiny melodies – little fragments and motifs which I used to compose the rest of the piece, including tapping on the body of the cello to imitate the sound of a moth getting trapped in a lamp.' Moth populations are experiencing steep declines across the globe due to habitat loss, pesticides, and the climate crisis. This has a knock-on effect on the ecosystem because moths are an important food source for bats, owls and birds – but also because moths are critical to pollination, albeit in ways that are still not fully understand. 'Many of us don't see moth numbers declining because they come out at night but they're just as vital to our ecosystem as bees and butterflies,' said Wilson. Wilson created the work with the support of Oxford Contemporary Music and with biodiversity scientists at the UK Centre of Ecology and Hydrology. The piece highlights the impact of the decline of the UK moth populations by ending with data from a different area: a farmland monoculture with only 19 moth species. 'I wanted the difference in moth populations to be audible,' said Wilson. 'There's so much sound at the beginning of the piece. At the end, there's very little.' Wilson said the scientists she teamed up with were enthusiastic about their work being turned into music. 'They've been trying to get the message across about catastrophic moth decline but they can't get traction using figures and data,' she said. 'Music is an accessible way for people to understand the disaster unfolding.' Wilson is not the only UK musician using nature to draw attention to the climate breakdown: Cosmo Sheldrake is appealing against the refusal of his legal attempt for the Ecuador forest to be recognised as a co-creator of a song he wrote. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion 'The nature of the ecological crisis is fast, so striking, so completely urgent and total – and natural sounds have so much charisma and power – that music based on nature can reveal and communicate things about the natural world far more effectively and powerfully than science can,' Sheldrake said. 'So much can be revealed from listening to ecosystems,' he added. 'Removing a single tree devastates the soundscape even though the forest might not look any different.' Radio Lento recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, streaming 'captured quiet' from 105 locations in 26 UK counties. And the UK-based design and architecture firm Heatherwick Studio is transforming an uninhabited island in Seoul, South Korea, into a public park, featuring musical performances based on soundwaves created by the mountainous terrain. But Finland has taken things one step further, becoming the first country in the world to create an official soundscape.
