Brian Patrick's moths and butterflies of New Zealand

This project contains the moth and butterfly observations made by New Zealand entomologist Brian Patrick (@butterfly4).

Since 1970, when Brian was a teenager, he has been carefully and consistently noting the moths he finds on all his trips. These trips have been to thousands of places, mostly throughout the South Island. They include light trapping by night and sweep netting by day.

All of his observations were written down on the night/day of collection, first by hand into notebooks, and later typed in Word documents. With financial assistance from the Brian Mason Scientific & Technical Trust, @jon_sullivan at Lincoln University with Davena Watkin and Morgan Jones, have converted these notes into an electronic database. These observations are shared with the world here via NatureWatch NZ, part of the global iNaturalist network.

Note that Brian carefully named the sites he visited but almost never provided map coordinates. He used standard place names from New Zealand map series maps, and the coordinates of the observations here are sourced from these maps. This means that the exact locations of the observations on NatureWatch NZ are far from GPS-level precision. The place names on the observations are the original names from Brian's notes. menos ↑