Creatures of the Night

 

Most stories that begin with darkness falling over a cemetery lead into a tale of the supernatural, after all it is a scene seen in countless horror movies. Choosing the name, Creatures of the Night for the first event to be held by Falmouth and Penryn Nature Wanders in Falmouth’s Victorian cemetery in part gave a nod to this connection. However it also aptly described the evening activities than ran from 1930 until 23.00.

The idea for the event came from Madeleine Fabusova who is researching moths at the nearby University of Exeter’s campus at Tremough. She was assisted during the evening by five friends from the university’s Ecology Society.

Preparation entailed hanging a special blue light on one of the white side walls of the chapel and placing a moth trap nearby. As the start time approached people started to arrive and soon a crowd had gathered by the chapel’s entrance. It was a drop in event and new people joined us throughout the evening and overall the event was very well attended.

Madeleine began the evening with a description of the evening events and a short introduction to moths. I followed this with short talk on nocturnal parasitic wasps with occasionally will be found in moth traps. This led me onto the one of the most impressive parasitic wasps, the American Tarantula Hawk wasp which included my impersonation of its dance that confuses the spider. It has to be seen to be believe and here is an excellent video. 

With darkness falling moths began to land on the chapel wall and once settled they became remarkably docile allowing people to see them close up. There really was some stunning looking moths and each was named by Madeleine or one of the other experts.

With more people arriving, Madeleine led the gathered people to look at the moth trap giving an explanation of how it worked while examining the moths inside. After this she and friends used torches and nets to collect moths as they led the group on a circular route using the cemetery paths.

While this was happening I was left on my lonesome to keep an eye on the light on the chapel wall while trying to ignore the fact that this situation usually doesn’t end well in films. I was understandably happy to greet new people arriving.

By the time Madeleine and her group returned an impressive number of moths had settled on the chapel walls. During the evening a total of 28 different species were recorded, see the video for a complete list. 

From the way people responded, the interest seen and the positive feedback received it was a very successful evening. With the arrival of Autumn moth activity decreases and so it will not be until next spring that the next one will held in the cemetery.

A big thank you to the members of the University of Exeter’s Ecology Society (Finley, Alex, James and James and Ben) for their assistance with the event.

Hopefully over the winter Madeleine will write a post for the blog describing her interest in moths and the research that she is carrying out.