A slow day in the field part 1

The middle of the month always heralds the moth trapping and bird ringing sessions at nearby Beeston. The May session, due to the poor weather was particularly slow and I only managed to find seven species of moth in the trap that had been left out overnight. They were:

Green carpet
Muslin moth
Shuttle shaped dart
Hebrew character
Iron Prominent
Common swift
Waved umber

The bird ringing wasn't much better and in fact was so dull that while the ringers were away checking nets at one point, myself and one of the ringers took to playing with two hapless millipedes we'd found lurking in a crevice of the plastic patio table we use to work from. 

First we attempted to see if they would fight each other, this was to no avail. They also seemed disinterested in trying to perform any kind of errr, hum, errr, cough .... anyway I don't suppose I'd be too keen on that kind of thing in front of an audience. The best we could muster from the poor creatures was to race them against each other across the table - it successfully seemed to keep us amused for ages.