For 22 years, I have recorded and enjoyed moths with Adrian Russell. He was the VC55 County Lepidoptera Recorder when I very first got interested, a role that he effectively took on from c1992 to try and give some structure and organisation to recording in VC55. I first corresponded with him in late 1999 with some moth records from my garden, and from early 2000 we exchanged many phone calls, 1000s (literally) of e-mails and enjoyed many nights out mothing along with the occasional social. We'd not done anywhere near as much out in the field in the last few years due to health issues and covid restrictions, but we did get in a couple of nights last year and a joint leafmining foray in mid-November.
Adrian was very helpful to me in the early days with his time, ID help, access to sites and generally being a model County Recorder. Over the years as my experience and knowledge grew, particularly on micros, Adrian was happy to ask me for help and guidance and over the last few years I've been helping reduce his workload by giving ID help to other recorders and helping with record verification. I've held the emergency back-up files for the VC55 dataset and masses of associated files for the last few years, with the last update coming through as recently as 05/04/2022.
This weekend I'm a bit lost and numb, saddened and shocked by the news that Adrian died on Friday after being in hospital all week. I knew about his illness, knew his prognosis and knew that he was unlikely to see out the year, but no-one could have foreseen such a sudden deterioration in his health.
Adrian had been working for a number of years on a book covering the full history of Lepidopteran recording in VC55 along with the status and details on all moth and butterfly species. It was a project that he'd essentially been researching for and thinking about for years and it is a shame he never got to finish it or see it published in the way he intended.
We shared many nights around a light, many early morning surprises going through traps with camping stove coffee and bacon butties, and added many species and dots to the VC55 dataset in the process. It will be very strange indeed running traps out and about without Adrian around, either sharing the experience or being the first to know of any exciting news.
1 comment:
I'm sorry to hear this buddy. Losing a friend is never an easy thing for a person's heart and head to accept, and the mothing scene as a whole just lost possibly its greatest living legend in John Langmaid a few weeks ago, one of just two old school naturalists I've had the pleasure of knowing. Hopefully Adrian's history of VC55 leps will be taken up and finished yet, eh?
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