Lockdown species challenge - the final table

 

Hello Moth-ers – After ten months since its inception, the ‘Target species challenge’ has finally drawn to a close. 19 moth-ers took part with varying degrees of success, but this in the main will be down to how often each mother trapped. In general it wasn’t an easy challenge as the species added each month weren’t always too common, but this of course added that extra incentive to the task, to record each species.

Now for a few statistics from the challenge: -

• Of the 19 recorders who took part 18 managed to record at least one species.
• Out of a possible 18 species, the most species recorded was by Alan Sibley and Peter Williams with 10 species, followed Douglas Boyes with 8 species.
• A total of 29 points was possible if every species on the list was recorded and the top three were Alan Sibley with 16 points (so, well done Alan) Peter Williams with 14 points and Douglas Boyes with 11 points (I have to add in all fairness, I have to add, had Douglas not passed away, he would have probably topped the table, he loved a challenge, but of course we’ll never know for sure).
• Every species on the challenge was recorded except for the Vestal, but this was down to the poor autumn when very few migrant species were recorded due to the weather conditions.
• The most recorded species was the Shoulder Stripe, which 13 out of the 19 recorders manages to record.

Hopefully this challenge has given us all something to concentrate on during varying degrees of ‘lockdown’ throughout the year and has encouraged us all to do a little more moth trapping.

All being well I’ll be doing our annual ‘January Challenge’ (details here soon), which will be open to everyone.

Final ‘challenge’ table posted below.

Peter.