Post card from Catalunya Nord – Summer Holiday 2015

 

If three years can be construed as a tradition then this is my traditional holiday blog post! This year we spent three weeks in Catalan France, in the Pyrénées-Orientales.  We have usually travelled south by putting our car on the train and having a relaxing and interesting overnight journey letting the train take the strain. Unfortunately there seems to be a conspiracy against motor-railers and yet another of our train options was closed this year.   As I like to bring back a few bottles of wine with me, the hire-car option is not very attractive. We thus had to do the ferry and drive option. We caught the ferry from Portsmouth on a Friday night and arrived early the next morning in Caen.

 

We were then faced with the long drive to Maureillas-las-Illas, a small town close to the Spanish border. We split the journey in half and spent the night in a very picturesque B&B run by an aged Italian lady in a tiny village in the Charente-Maritime,

not far from the town of Saint-Genis-de-Saintonge, near Pons, which had rather an unusual roundabout which I immediately added to my collection 😉

Pons itself was a rather nice little town which just happened to be having a medieval fete when we arrived.

We eventually arrived at Maureillas-las-Illas and were then faced with a 20 minute drive up a single track mountain road to Las Illas and finally up a dirt track to our holiday villa in Super Las Illas (a seven minute walk from the Spanish border) where we to be based for the next three weeks.

There was of course a pool, with a lovely view, although given that we were at 900 m, it was not the warmest pool we have ever

experienced even on a sunny day J

In terms of wildlife, it was not as prolific as some places we have stayed, although the pool collected the usual suicidal millipedes, Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera and even some grasshoppers and the odd shield bug or two. I also rescued a small lizard which then seemed to become very attached to me, at one stage even taking refuge in my hair.

There were the usual impossible to photograph humming-bird hawk moths and numerous swallowtails

which I did manage to snap. I also discovered that one of my favourite entomological shirts was a great hoverfly attractant, although despite the design, did not fool any of the butterflies.

We were not far from Ceret, which we had visited five years ago and were happy to renew our acquaintance with its narrow streets, Picasso fountain and many cafés.

We also came across this street celebrating Charles De Gaulle’s exhortation to the French people in 1940, although I was saddened to see that vandals had been at work, albeit appositely.

We also visited Amelie-les-Bains and Prats de Mollo La Preste, the former apparently famous for urinary tract cures!   In Prats we saw

multi-storey graves and also a great painting of one of the gates of the old walled town on a house opposite the actual gate

Unusually we only had one trip to the coast, Port Vendres where we enjoyed a sunny morning and a very long lunch.

 

On our return to the villa we might have been forgiven for thinking that we had somehow been transported back to an English autumn.

We also we went to Vernet-les-Bains and surrounding areas, looking at potential places to retire. We knocked quite a few houses off the possible to buy list; it is amazing how different the pictures that estate agents put on their sites are from the real thing.   It was nice to be in Vernet again, although once again Gill found the hilly streets a bit tough going.

Since our last visit the old communal lavoir has been very nicely restored both externally and internally.

 

Vernet also has a nice arboretum scattered through the town and parks, so you often come across signs like this. I was pleased to see that one of my favourite trees (Prunus padus, bird cherry) gets a mention.

We also visited Elne a very pretty sleepy little town with a small cathedral.  Nearby we found a nice artist’s centre where we had lunch and a local artisanal Catalan beer,

 

                                

and for the entomologists, some horse-chestnut leaf miner damage

 

Gorges de la Fou is well worth a visit and as well as being geologically impressive, is also signed botanically.

                      

It turned out that the obligatory safety hats were made in the UK.

We also visited Thuir – mainly famous for Byrrh (but they also prepare and bottle other fortified aromatic wines including Cinzano, Ambassadeur, Vabe and Dubonnet). Unfortunately the tour didn’t have any manufacturing going on but there were free samples at the end, which as a responsible driver was a little frustrating.

                                

We visited Perpignan a couple of times.   Both times we were blessed with lovely hot sunny weather. Plenty of canal side cafes, the castle of the Kings of Majorca is worth a visit, with great views from the top, although a bit of a climb to get there.

                                                      

We also came across these giant flower pots which is certainly an interesting way to grow urban trees.

 

Closer to home was the Cork museum in Maureillas-las-Illas .   It is very interesting although quite small, and even if you watch the video and visit the shop, where I bought a cork post card, the visit is easily done within an hour. I really liked the mini-sculptures in cork depicting the making of cork. There were also examples of cork ark and furniture.

And of course, not forgetting the biggest cork in the world.

On Day One of our marathon motorway trip on our way back to catch the ferry we stopped at the most fantastic motorway service station (Aire) ever – jazz band, environmental messages, great gift shop, a restaurant, a cafeteria, and a sandwicherie, plus lots of water (it was on the Canal du Midi). Perhaps our motorway service areas could take a lesson from Vinci.

 

 

 

 

We broke our return journey in the Charente-Maritime again, this time staying in a glorious B&B in Forges. Nearby was the town of Surgeres which provided me with yet another roundabout for my collection.

 

The next morning, as La Rochelle was not far way, we took the opportunity to have coffee there and to do a bit of sight-seeing. A very picturesque place indeed and it would have been nice if we could have stopped longer. It is now on our list of places to come and revisit.

 

We left La Rochelle late morning and continued our trip towards Caen, where we arrived in the early evening with plenty of time to do a bit of sight-seeing.  We came across this very shiny statue of Joan of Arc.  We then sat in the sun at the head of the canal and had a very good dinner.

Then sadly, it was off to the ferry port to wait to be allowed to board as the sun set on our holiday ;-(

Post script

This year we invested in Télépéage, which allowed us to sail through the toll booths on the motorways instead of queuing and scrabbling for the right money – well worth the investment.

Entomological classics – the Light Trap

I think that even those of us who are not entomologists are familiar with the attraction that insects, particularly moths, have for light. The great Sufi philosopher Bahauddin Valad (1152-1231) wrote the following lines

a candle has been lit

inside me,

for which

the sun

is a moth.

 

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596), Portia famously declaims “Thus hath the candle singed the moath.”

It may thus come as a bit of surprise to realise that ‘modern’ entomologists were quite slow to develop bespoke traps that took advantage of this aspect of insect behaviour. That said, according to Beavis (1995) the Roman author Columella (Lucius Junius Moderatus, 4-7 AD), describes a light trap to be used to protect bee hives from wax moth attacks. A pretty much identical trap was still being used in 1565 (Gardiner, 1995) although he erroneously calls it the first light-trap. As far as I can tell the early ‘modern’ Lepidopterists used the white sheet technique, still used today, where a light source such as a paraffin lamp (nowadays an electric light or powerful torch) was suspended above or behind a white sheet, from which the intrepid entomologist collected specimens of interest that come to rest on the sheet. This can be very efficient but does require the entomologist to be ‘on duty’ throughout the trapping

The white sheet technique.

period, although on a fine night, with good companionship and an ample supply of beer, or other alcoholic beverage, it can be a very pleasant way to spend a long evening 😉

The earliest published reference to a modern bespoke light trap that I have been able to find is a patent from 1847 for a modified beehive which includes a light trap to lure wax moths away from the main part of the hive (Oliver Reynolds, 184, US Patent5211; http://www.google.com/patents/US5211).

The modified Reynolds Beehive incorporating moth trap.

The second published reference to a bespoke light trap is again one designed to control wax moths and is described in a patent application by J M Heard dated 1860. In this case as far as I can make out the lamp is actually glass coated with a phosphorescent material rather than using a candle or oil flame.

“The basin A, is supplied with a requisite quantity of molasses or other suitable substance to serve as a bait, and the inner sides of the glass plates c, of the lamp C, are covered with a mixture of phosphorus and oil or phosphorus combined with any suitable substance to form a cement, or a stick E, may be coated with the cement, said stick being passed through the tube e, into the lamp, as shown plainly in Fig. 1. The insects decoyed by the light and attracted by the bait, strike against the inclined glass plates c, and fall into the basin A. By having the plates c, inclined the insects are made to fall through the opening b, into the basin and said opening is permitted to be comparatively small and the cover a, of the basin in connection with the cover D, of lamp protect perfectly the bait from sun and rain, thereby protecting an unnecessary waste of the same. During the day the phosphorus of course is not needed unless it be cloudy, but the device is chiefly efficacious at night as the visits of the insects are mostly nocturnal.”

So whilst beekeepers and agriculturalists were busy using traps to attract moths to kill them what were the lepidopterists doing? It appears that they were using whole rooms as light traps as described here by H T Stainton in 1848.

 

A later Victorian entomological ‘how to’ book, added instructions of how to use gas and paraffin lamps outside, with the lepidopterist standing ready with his net (Greene, 1880).

The 20^th Century was however, when we see the birth of the light traps as we know them today. First on the scene was the Rothamsted Trap, developed by the great C B Williams, which was

 

The electric ‘fixed’ Rothamsted Trap.

The ‘portable’ Rothamsted Trap – Williams (1948)

developed from earlier versions that he used in the 1920s and 1930s, in Egypt and England (Williams, 1924, 1935).

Rothamsted trap in action

 

Apparently the first electrical light trap to use an ultra-violet light was made in 1938 (Barratt, 1989) and used in the 1940s (Fry & Waring, 2001) but it was not until 1950 that the first commercially available version was produced (Robinson & Robinson, 1950).

The Robinson Trap – very popular and ideal for use in gardens where there is easy access to a mains supply.

 

Strangely, considering that the Americans had been first on the scene with patented light traps it was not until 1957 that the Pennsylvanian and Texas traps appeared on the scene (Frost, 1957) closely followed by the Texas traps (Hollingsworth et al., 1963). These traps used fluorescent tubes instead of bulbs and were particularly good at catching beetles, moths and ants. The Texas trap and the Pennsylvania trap were essentially the same, the main difference being that the Pennsylvania trap has a circular roof to prevent train entering the killing bottle. As Southwood (1966) somewhat tongue in cheek says, this may reflect the differences in the climate of the two states 😉

The Pennsylvanian Light Trap.

In the 1960s the Heath Trap appeared on the scene (Heath, 1965). This was billed as being extremely portable, being able to be carried in a back pack and also able to be run either from a mains supply or from a 12 volt battery.

The Heath Light trap.

Less expensive and more portable is the Skinner trap, (designed by Bernard Skinner in as far as I can make out in the early 1980s, please let me know if you know exactly) which comes in wooden and aluminium versions and is collapsible, so that if needed, several can be transported at once. It comes in both mains and battery versions.

  

The Skinner light trap – relatively inexpensive and very portable.

An interesting combination of light and odour being used to attract and trap insects, in this case to ‘control’ them, is the Strube Stink bug trap. This is an American invention and is used to protect US householders against the the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, Halyomorpha halys, an invasive species from Asia which appears to have developed a propensity to overwinter in people’s houses. I remember a few years ago that we in the UK were warned that it might cross the channel from France; this resulted in lurid headlines in the ‘Red Top’ newspapers with wording like ‘stench spraying insect’ being used 😉

Strube Stink Bug Trap

 

This appears to be a very effective trap; all the reviews I have read praise it highly, so if the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug does make it to the UK, the Strube trap will be the one to buy!

 

References

Frost, S.W. (1957) The Pennsylvanian light trap. Journal of Economic Entomology, 50, 287-292.

Fry, R. & Waring, P. (2001) A Guide to Moth Traps and their Use. Amateur Entomologist, Orpington, Kent.

Gardiner, B.O.C. (1995) The very first light-trap, 1565? Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation, 107, 45-46

Greene, J. (1880) The Insect Hunter’s Companion. W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen, London.

Heath, J. (1965) A genuinely portable MV light trap. Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation, 77, 236-238.

Hollingsworth, J.P., Hartstock, J.G. & Stanley, J.M. (1963) Electrical insect traps for survey purposes. U.S.D.A. Agricultural Research Service 42-3-1, 10 pp.

Robinson, H.S. & Robinson, P.J.M. (1950) Some notes on the observed behaviour of Lepidoptera in the vicinity of light sources together with a description of a light trap designed to take entomological samples. Entomologist’s Gazette, 1, 3-20

Southwood, T.R.E. (1966) Ecological Methods. Chapman & Hall, London

Stainton, H.T. (1848) On the method of attracting Lepidoptera by light. The Zoologist, 6, 2030-2031

Williams, C.B. (1924) An improved light trap for insects. Bulletin of Entomological Research, 15, 57-60.

Williams, C.B. (1935) The times of activity of certain nocturnal insects, chiefly Lepidoptera, as indicate by a light-trap. Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London B, 83, 523-555.

Williams, C.B. (1948) The Rothamsted light trap.   Proceedings of the Royal Entomological Society of London A, 23, 80-85.

 

Post script

There are of course more light traps out there, many being variations of those described above, or for specific insect groups such as mosquitoes or aquatic traps for Cladocera (water fleas). Many ‘home made’ traps also exist, such as the ‘portable’ one I made for use on the field course that I used to run at Silwood Park.

The Leather Light Trap

I used a rechargeable battery lantern, but other light sources would also work. In retrospect I should have painted the Perspex black so that only the ‘entrance’ funnels emitted light. There was a tendency for insects to sit on the outside of the trap rather than enter it.

A useful link for those wishing to make their own traps can be found here http://www.theskepticalmoth.com/techniques/light-traps/ and Fry & Waring (2001) also has some very useful hints and tips.