We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which we live and pay our respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging.
We are citizen scientists with a care for nature generally, and a prime interest in Lepidoptera and Rainforests. Currently, on our property, Claire Cottage (drone photo above), we are revegetating sub-tropical and warm temperate rainforest on approximately 4 to 5 acres of cleared, kikuyu covered former paddocks. We have maintained paths through the planted areas to both assist with maintenance and allow viewing of the emerging juvenile rainforest. This land is 800 metres above sea level and where treeless is frost prone in winter adding to the challenge we face. The removal of cattle at the time we purchased has led over time to the return of much wildlife at the same time we are reintroducing rainforest.
Our objective in establishing and maintaining this Moth website is to record the moths and their caterpillars that we sight here on our rural property on the Dorrigo Plateau, NSW. There are 82 known Australian Moth Families. In addition to securing photographs of the live moths attracted to our moth light, we plan to document any information of interest, about each specific species, that we observe here.
In our childhood years our interest in lepidoptera began as collectors, later we became conservationists and no longer held any interest in killing moths or building pinned collections. Such pinned collections have been necessary to assist scientific study and continue to be important for Museums and scientific organisations today, but rarely is this process needed now for citizen scientists. Digital photography today allows citizen scientists to create a collection in the form of photographs, stored on a computer, enabling long term retention without risk of damage or colour loss over time. This approach assists our personal goal to do all we can to assist species to thrive and maintain healthy populations.
After photographing the moths attracted to our moth light, but whilst still dark, we switch off the light to encourage visiting moths to take flight again before morning for their safety. Moths remaining on the sheet as day breaks become breakfast for birds. This risk is removed if using a moth trap where moths securely shelter unharmed and can later be photographed in daylight prior to release next evening.
We also have an interest in learning as much as we can about the first three stages of a moth’s life cycle (egg, caterpillar and pupa/chrysalis). Learning larval food plants also gives us the ability to plant more of them on the property.
We have been photographing Dorrigo Plateau Lepidoptera since 2004 and have a large database of local butterfly and moth photographs, including some unnamed species.
Our Dorrigo Butterfly website is http://butterfliesdorrigo.weebly.com/
Our property
8 hectares (20 acres) at 790 – 840m asl on the Dorrigo Plateau opposite a small National Park. It is in the World Heritage-listed Gondwana Rainforests. Half of the property has remnant warm temperate rainforest and a smaller area of subtropical rainforest around a former dam which is now a pond supporting an abundance of aquatic life and frogs.
The land is gently sloping with Megan Soil Landscape with a substrate of late Carboniferous Brooklana Bed Metasediments. Mainly siliceous mudstones. Possibility of metabasalts.
The Vegetation types are:
1. (Araucarian) Coachwood-Sassafras Warm Temperate Rainforest (Ceratopetalum apetalum Alliance, Ceratopetalum-Doryphora suballiance No. 36; Floyd, 1990)
2. Coachwood/Crabapple-Caldcluvia Warm Temperate Rainforest (Ceratopetalum apetalum Alliance, Ceratopetalum/Schizomeria-Caldcluvia suballiance No. 35; Floyd, 1990)
3. Coachwood-Yellow Carabeen Warm Temperate/Subtropical Rainforest (Ceratopetalum apetalum Alliance, Ceratopetalum apetalum-Sloanea woollsii gradation of the Ceratopetalu/Schizomeria-Heritiera suballiance No. 33; Floyd, 1990)
4. Callicoma Warm Temperate Rainforest Regrowth.
5. Tick Bush Scrub
6. Grassland
Temperature ranges from -5° to 30° with frost in open areas in winter. Average annual rainfall over the last 50 years is 2000mm. Water drains from surrounding hills to flow down our dry creek gully following heavy rains.
In 2016 we received a 10-year grant through Jaligiirr Biodiversity Alliance Inc. to plant a rainforest wildlife corridor connecting our local NSW National Park with our remnant rainforests. The initial trees planted (Nov 2016) were cold hardy Dorrigo Plateau pioneer species planted along the western boundary of our smallest paddock. These were followed (Nov 2017) by rainforest species planted amongst the ‘cold hardy’ plantings for frost protection. We have since planted much of the rest of this former paddock with rainforest species. There is also a considerable amount of self-seeding now happening as birds return to our property in good numbers. Many of the rainforest species are food plants for moths (& butterflies) with the number of moth species coming to the moth light having increased over the years.
We have left an area of grassland open in two of our ex-paddocks to increase rainforest edge zones and to maintain flight corridors for butterflies and moths and support those that feed on Poaceae and edge trees on the developing rainforest. The reintroduction of rainforest itself removes kikuyu which cannot tolerate shade and creates areas for native grasses to self seed encouraging a range of lepidoptera to establish also. The power clearings also act as flight corridors for lepidoptera.
In June 2017 the NSW Office of Environment & Heritage approved a VCA (Voluntary Conservation Agreement – existing for perpetuity) for our property covering approximately 4 hectares of remnant rainforest existing here. The former dam, see photo above, is within that conservation protected area.