A detailed new book, The Moths of Lancashire, is due to be published in a couple of months, with the support of the Tanyptera Trust.
Written by Steve Palmer and Ben Smart, it includes descriptions, photos, maps, flight times, caterpillar photos (where available) and foodplant lists for each of the county’s 1570 species.
The definition of Lancashire used includes most of Greater Manchester (north of the Mersey), so contains Rochdale.
As Ben is from Rochdale, and his parents still live here, many of the records and photos are taken within the borough. An example is Elachista poae, a scarce micro-moth species within the county, but whose caterpillar he has found leaf-mining Sweet Canary-grass at Mandale Park, and along the Rochdale Canal from Deeplish to Littleborough.
We are taking the unusual step of publicising the book as we think it might be of interest to many members.
The photo is a page example which contains Elachista poae.
We are hoping to organise a talk on moths, possibly by one of the authors, as one of our Indoor meetings in the new season.