City Nature Challenge is an international event held over a weekend where everyone is
encouraged to go outside and record as many plants, bugs, birds and every other type of
living thing they can find. All the sightings are recorded through the iNaturalist app and the
results are published a few weeks later.

This year’s event was held over last weekend and you may have seen the publicity or,
indeed, taken part in one of the many events held in Swansea.

Here in Penllergare Valley Woods, we hosted three events on Sunday starting with an early
morning Dawn Chorus Walk. It was a beautiful morning and we were rewarded with lots of
birdsong! Between ears, eyes and apps we identified 16 different bird species. We followed this with some moth identification. We had set up a battery-operated moth
trap, generously donated to us by the South East Wales Records Centre (SEWBReC), on
Saturday night. Moth traps consist essentially of a light, which attracts the moths and a box
in which they shelter and can be observed the following morning. Moths are later released
into nearby vegetation – that is those that haven’t flown off already! We have about 2400
different species of moth in the UK and Ireland, ranging from the very small micro-moths,
with wing spans of less than 2cm, up to some very striking large hawkmoths that can have a
wingspan of over 10cm! We had a modest collection of 12 species to look at on Sunday
morning. We aim to do a lot more moth trapping in different habitat areas in the woods to
try to get a better idea of what range of moth species are here.
After all that excitement, we went for a walk! This turned out to be a very slow walk as we
tried to identify as many plants and trees as we could. We ended up with 69 different
species!

A very good day and, hopefully, something we’ll repeat for City Nature Challenge 2026!

Ciaran O’Brien