Under the warming sun of a balmy summer morning we’re on safari, on a wondrous hunt for something not seen around these parts…ever. Not once.  Not one single sighting. The small but perfectly formed White Spotted Black  (Denisia albimaculea )  micro moth.

That is until now. We recently announced that this little creature of the night had been recorded in the York Museum Gardens in what is the first sighting in the whole of Yorkshire. It is incredible to me that this discovery was not made in an ancient oak forest in a national park, not in the protected meadow fields of a nature reserve, but right here, bang in the centre of a city.

It is so rare that it has not been seen at all in the UK since 2011. But thanks to the expertise and patience of Bowen Chang and Patrick Wildgust from Shandy Hall,  Coxwold, who are comparing moth numbers in the gardens with those in the rural setting, we can now say the Gardens have a species found nowhere else in the biggest county in the country.Finding this micro moth once was not easy – they only have a wingspan of 9-12mm. But last week we thought we would try again and invite BBC Radio York along to see the results.

Patrick and Bowen set up traps on Sunday evening and left them overnight ready the live piece on breakfast at 7:40am. For anyone who has never seen them, the traps rely on light to draw the moths in to a box below  The box that greeted myself, Stuart Ogilvy, assistant curator of natural sciences at the Yorkshire Museum and Laurence Whitaker from Radio York was full of moths of all shapes and sizes… But would the White Spotted Black be among them?

The answer, I am afraid to say, is no. But this didn’t take away from what was a fantastic moth safari. The white Bird Cherry Ermine  (Yponomeuta evonymella) dazzled in the sun, the  Large  Yellow  Underwings  (Noctua pronuba) began to vibrate, warming their wings for take off. There were also a number of the unusual  Bee Moths,  (Aphomia sociella) whose young feed on honey. But the star of the show was the magnificently named Ruby Tiger (Phragmatobia fuliginosa), it’s body bright orange pink, its wings copper, each with a black spot like the markings on a military plane. This is the moth equivlent of Ziggy Stardust – see below for proof.

We might not have found the elusive White Spotted Black, but Radio York seemed impressed by the number of different species found. In total Bowen and Patrick have recorded 16 new species never seen in the gardens before. This is great news for Alison Pringle, gardens manager, and her team and their efforts in making the gardens an attractive home to wildlife.

It also shows the benefit of working in partnership with experts, which the Trust is increasingly trying to do. Working with people from other fields of expertise often offers us new ways of looking at and assessing the collections and spaces we look after. Certainly, this project has caused a bit of a flutter…

To find out more about Shandy Hall’s moth project, go to: http://www.shandyhallmoths.blogspot.co.uk/