New year, new equipment

After a year of pleading and pestering, I finally managed to annoy my university into buying some insect survey equipment for students to use on campus. To be fair to them, they did go all out and spent £500 on a sturdy moth trap and an amazingly lightweight battery.

A couple of hardy students swapped the local nightclub for the cold and joined me in christening the moth trap on campus yesterday. We only caught one moth, but with a bat detector to play with, some fantastic Soprano Pipistrelles, a starry sky and a couple of beers, everyone went away happy...

Acleris schalleriana - the first of (hopefully) many insects to be recorded on campus!