Everyone's allowed to be silly when it comes to bugs

Geopark ambassador HEATHER BOTHWELL will take the first of her summer-long series of bug hunts around County Cavan this Sunday in Killykeen Forest Park. Ahead of this series of nature trails she took the Celt’s deputy editor DAMIAN MCCARNEY on a dry run to Killykeen see what insects were under their noses.

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“It’s a form of madness, I accept that.”
Heather Bothwell’s words are ringing in my ears as she directs me to whack a tree with a stick. She awaits holding a beating tray, a rectangular frame with a white sheet stretched taut, eager to catch whatever insects may tumble from their perch. Tentatively I thwack a tree, fearful of being spotted vandalising a tree by morning joggers.
“Give it a good wallop,” she commands, wondering at her fey bug hunt assistant on this crisp sunny morning. Obediently I follow through with about a dozen swings.
“We’ll see if we’ve got anything,” she says eventually, the soft Ulster-Scots accent of her Ballymena youth more easily detectable than any unfortunate critters disturbed by the mini tree-quake.
A tinchy spider scuttles off to the edges, but a minuscule caterpillar catches Heather’s trained eye.
“Because we’re at this time of year, that’s going to turn into a moth,” she explains of the caterpillar, verdant against the white of the sheet.
How do you know it’s a moth and not a butterfly?
“Do you see the way that fella is moving,” she asks. He’s drawing his hindquarters up to his front and then extending forward again. “It’s what the Americans call inch-worm and British call loopers. In scientific terminology, that’s called geometridae, as in measuring, geometric. It’s very distinctive, it’s a group of moths that do that.
“These are really really important because all the Bluetits that are going to be nesting this month, it’s the geometridae they are after. They are feeding a couple of thousand of these caterpillars to their broods - they’ve big broods.”
When was it laid on the bark by the moth.
“Different moths have different strategies, some will over-winter as the egg, some will over-winter as the caterpillar, some will over-winter as the pupae, some will over winter as the adult.”
Because this is so small she surmises it is very young and therefore over-wintered as an egg.
Also on the beating tray is a fly of some sort. Using a pooter - a glass cylinder with an opening at one end and tubing at the other - she sucks it into the chamber so we can have a proper look. It’s a gnat.
“That’s how you can tell a bee from a fly: if you have two wings it is a fly, and don’t forget there are lots of flies pretending to be bees.”
I had indeed forgotten, or more accurately, hadn’t known.
“Birds see black and yellow and see danger - it’s got a sting. So there are flies that go, ‘Ah yeah, we’ll take that colour, nobody will touch us’.
“That’s why hoverflies are that colour - ‘Warning!’ But they won’t do you any harm. Lots of people go ‘That’s a bee, that’s a bee!’”
The Celt notes that there’s much talk of bumble bees being under threat, and Heather explains that more could be done to provide suitable plants and flowers. For example, in front of us there’s a huge expanse of grass, and she suggests there’s no reason why this and other public spaces couldn’t be nurtured into a wild flower meadow, a haven for bees.
“It’s more a case of, ‘I didn’t know - I never thought’,” she says of the relevant authorities. “It’s not badness. It’s just a matter of a wee bit of effort and someone caring - but they will! They will bit by bit,” she says in her endearing upbeat way.
Heather welcomes the new award Pollinator Award introduced by Tidy Towns as a good step forward in encouraging suitable bee habitats.

Moth trap
Sporting a sturdy pair of wellies, she eyes my blue suede shoes and apologetically suggests clambering up a hill amongst the woods to see what she’s caught in her moth trap. Betraying her lifelong interest in nature, she received the trap as a birthday present upon turning sixteen.
It’s a simple battery operated trap; at its summit are four plastic partitions, which direct the moths, smitten by a UV light, into its metallic belly. Inside a handful of moths have taken shelter amongst the crevices of an egg box container, which Heather has inserted to provide hiding spaces.
“That one there, it’s got a great name, it’s called ‘Hebrew Character’,” she says explaining that many of the expert entomologists back in the pioneering days of the field were Anglican rectors.
“I have no Hebrew whatsoever, but apparently the shape of the dark mark is like some kind of Hebrew letter.
“When you look at them really closely, I know it looks dull and brown, but it’s actually quite rich, like a rich Victorian upholstery.”
Moths are amongst the star cast of Cavan’s impressive insect population, and there’s plenty of varieties to be found - often more flamboyant than the understated Hebrew Character.
Heather points to the Rosebay Willow herb growing amidst the mossy forest floor and confidently predicts that the Elephant Hawk Moth will be on the wing in the coming weeks.
“It’s not a rare moth, but it’s nice. For people who say, ‘Uuh I don’t like moths’, you have to show them a beautiful pink one.
“The caterpillar is about that size,” she says, her finger and thumb about three inches apart, “and it is like the trunk of an elephant.”
“There’s a great range of moths, and as the season comes on you get the more attractive ones, you get ones like Ruby Tiger, and you get these lovely white ones, Ermine, like they wear in the House of Lords.”
Moths continue to emerge late into the year, Heather explains. There’s even one called the December Moth, the male of which sports beautiful feather-like antennae to detect the scent of females.
Modestly Heather states that she’s no insect expert, but she can direct people to the right section of her guidebooks. Amongst its pages she stumbles across the Narrow Bordered Bee Hawk Moth - surely a contender for world’s best impersonator.
“It looks like a bee - that is very rare, but I’ve actually found that in Killeshandra. It feeds on Devil’s Bit Scabious plant, so up in west Cavan where it’s more acid ground. Killeshandra has acid ground if the farmer isn’t out sewing lime. The Devil’s Bit Scabious plant is also the food plant of the Marsh Fritillary - and people get all excited about the Marsh Fritillary. It is the only insect which is protected in Ireland. But this [Narrow Bordered Bee Hawk] is actually rarer - there’s fewer records of these, so I’ll get quite excited if we find one of these during the geopark walks.”
Another coup would be to find a particularly stunning butterfly.
“I know there’s Silver Washed Fritillaries here. They’re a lovely big orange butterfly, glorious. You get them in the month of August, and I know that they’re here so it would be great to get them on the actual bug hunt.”

Thrill
Heather insists she genuinely feels the thrill of the hunt.
“I’m setting traps - what will I get tonight! You are going out with nets chasing after things - it’s a form of madness, I accept that,” she says laughing. “But it’s a great thrill, and it’s harmless. I’m not doing anybody any harm, and it’s only wee bugs.
“Yes I do have to kill them and pin them and set them to identify them, but the difference between that and say killing and stuffing birds is, the way insects work they produce thousands of eggs and thousands of young, so pinning one of them isn’t going to damage the population. What it means is, we know that it’s here and we will be able to look after the habitat that they’re in. Something like this,” she says pointing to a colourful moth in her guidebook, “I wouldn’t dream of killing it because you can see immediately what it is.
“The taxonomists are the people who know what things are, they identify them. But there’s people like me [parataxonomists] who go out and find them, and collect them, and then you get help - okay I’ve got this specimen, what is it?” this vital help comes from the National Biodiversity Centre in Waterford. They compile maps outlining where various species of wildlife can have been found.
“They’re dying to get all the records, and places like Cavan - because there’s low population, are poorly recorded. You are bound to get species in Cavan that have never been recorded before, because no one’s been looking for them.
In search of a different habitat we dander along a scrub trail on the lough shore, with the ill-fated holiday chalets looming above us. Now we have the chance to put her nets into action. One sweep of a net through longer foliage gathers an array of flies and spiders.

Favourite
Asked for her favourite insect Heather is torn between hoverflies and dragonflies, but finally opts for the latter.
“Dragon flies and Damselflies there’s only a limited number so you can very quickly get to know them all in Ireland - they’re actually a good group for people to get to know. And they’re very attractive because they have these lovely bright vibrant colours - and you know them instantly - you don’t have to catch them. Because Cavan is such a wet county, if you’re into Dragonflies this is a great place to come.”
She’s equally fascinated by the Dragonfly’s water-dwelling larvae.
“They’re big strong fellas - they’re exciting when you catch them. They’re hunters - if you have something else in your tank there might be a bit of murder going on.
“They go hhwwuupp! They have a jaw that’s more like an elbow, so it comes out: hhwwuupp-humph. They’re incredible.”

What’s the difference between Dragonflies and Damselflies?
“Dragonflies hold their wings out straight, Damselflies hold them up behind their backs. Damselflies are far easier to catch. My daughter used to go around the lake catching them with her hand. Dragonflies go vvvooommm vvvooommm,” she says sounding like a car speeding past.
As we make our way along the path we hear before we see Heather’s second favourite insect - Hoverflies.
“It’s like a Honey Bee,” she correctly observes. “But it only has two wings, and their behaviour is different. A bee would be much slower and they wouldn’t hang in the air like that.”
These are taking an interest in flowers, but Heather points to a fetid swampy patch of muck beside us from which they probably emerged.
“All the farmers will know rat-tail maggots, you get them where the silage effluent is coming out - they’re maggots with long tails, like rats’ tails. So they’re living in nutrient rich, but low oxygen mud and slime. But then they produce these, well to my eye, rather beautiful hoverflies.”
She identifies the hoverfly as a species of Eristalis
“I wouldn’t be confident, it could be Eristalis 10X, it could be something else. I’m afraid he is doomed. I will take him home and stick a pin in him. By doing that I can look it up in the book and send the record in.”
We make use of Heather’s water nets, sweeping them along the lough’s rippling shallows. Amongst the many water snails is something that looks like a hollow twig. Heather puts it into a small plastic beaker and identifies it as a Caddis fly. After a few seconds it pokes it’s head and legs out of the opening of it’s DIY casing and scuttles about.
“The adult stage looks like a moth, but they lay their eggs in the water, and the young larval stages live in the water - there’s loads and loads of different species of those.”
It’s incredible that they are able to live in water, the Celt offers.
“Well lots of insects do. Don’t forget that there’s oxygen in the water... certainly when you go to rivers the insects are used as an indication of how clean the water is. If you have a clean river you’re going to have things like Mayfly larvae, Stonefly larvae, if you don’t, you’re going to just have river worms.”

Silly
The Celt suggests that a big incentive for Heather in hosting the walks is to encourage an interest in ecology.
“I want people to have fun. It’s good for mind, body and soul to be out in the natural world. If you see and appreciate what’s there, then there’s a better chance that you will say, ‘It’s valuable, I’ll look after it’, and encourage other people to look after it. In the long term it’s good for me when I’m old and grey, and the next generation, that it will still be there, because there were people in the past that were saying, ‘This is interesting, this is important, let’s do something about it’.”
She’s eager to attract all ages to the bug hunts.
“Traditionally people say, ‘Oh that’s for kids’. I say, why should we lose our curiosity for the natural world around us once we get to the big age of 12 - ‘That’s only for babies’. I hope people don’t think that’s just for kids, because we’re all allowed to be a bit silly.”

 

HEATHER'S INSECT WALKS

Sunday, May 8, 2.15pm, Killykeen

Sunday, May 22, 2.15pm, Garvagh lake, Blacklion

Sunday, June 5, 2.15pm, Killeshandra Town Lake

Sunday, June 19, 2.15pm, Garvagh Lake, Blacklion

Sunday, July 10, 2.15pm, Rann Point, off L1511 from Butlers Bridge (or L1508 from the west)

Sunday, July 24, 2.15pm, Dowra, meet at court house

Sunday, August 7, 2.15pm, Burren centre, Blacklion

Sunday, August 21, 2.15pm, Killykeen