Dorset Nightlife

This year I’ve seen scarlet tigers, pink elephants, emeralds, two ghosts and a shark in my garden! It isn’t due to alcoholic excess; I’m actually hooked on moths and their incredible biodiversity. There’s the privet hawkmoth built like a miniature jump-jet only, as a moth, it is pretty sizable filling the length and breadth of a large human palm. Then there’s the equally big contortionist, the poplar hawkmoth that rests with its hind wings in front of its fore wings. The camouflage experts include the bufftip that looks like a bit of peeled off bark, the scorched wing that mimics a dead leaf and the Chinese character rather incongruously named because it looks like a bird dropping. We have also been visited by day flying exhibitionists, the garden and scarlet tigers and the awesome hummingbird hawkmoths that never seem to rest, zipping from flower to flower. In total this year, there have been 111 species trapped in my light-box in just 19 nights, almost double the number of species of butterfly I’ve seen in the UK in a lifetime. 

From Ammonites to Dinosaurs

Having moved to Dorset earlier this year, I spent my 50^th Birthday at the Dinosaur museum in Dorchester, apparently the only UK museum dedicated totally to the subject. We went to entertain my young nephew and niece but I came away totally absorbed by the discovery of the dinosaurs and how big an impact this must have had at the time on religion in particular in the early C19th. I was also surprised that a woman, a poor woman, had succeeded in being a pioneer. ‘She sells sea shells on the seashore’ is a lot better known than Mary Anning, who is thought to be the source of the tongue twister. It presumably refers to the ammonites she and her family collected to sell to tourists to keep them from starvation although these were often referred to as snake stones in her day. They actually remind me far more of sea horses which frequent the other end of the Dorset coast. The ammonites lead to far greater things and not one but several complete fossilized dinosaur skeletons. Most of us involved in scientific research can only dream of a dinosaur moment but should rest assured discovering an ammonite still requires great skill and can make an important and very satisfying find.