Moth Morning and Bug Hunt

Portsmouth Natural History Museum is hosting a Moth Morning and Bug Hunt in its garden on Wednesday 26 August. It's a morning spent outdoors with the garden as the focus, and there are a couple of hands-on things to do while you're there: insect rubbing posts and collection trays for anyone who wants to get a bit more involved than just watching.

If you've never been inside, the museum is built around the Guermonprez Collection, the life's work of Henry Guermonprez, who earned the nickname 'the Gilbert White of Bognor'. It's a serious amount of natural history under one roof: more than 10,000 Lepidoptera specimens, over 1,400 pinned bees, more than 800 taxidermy specimens — mostly birds — and over 1,000 lichen specimens, alongside plenty of plant, fungi and insect specimens. You can see it through displays like Guermonprez's Legacy - the Gilbert White of Bognor, and the museum also runs the Observational Beehive, a display of a live beehive.

So the morning in the garden sits right next to all that. You've got the moths and the bug hunt outside, and the Guermonprez collection inside, which gives you a good sense of the scale of the things you're looking for. It's on Wednesday 26 August at the Portsmouth Natural History Museum.