A TEENAGE Butterfly Conservation volunteer who became the first person to find the eggs of a mysterious moth in the UK has been nominated for a national award.

Holly Doherty, 18, discovered the eggs of the elusive Silver Shade at the remote Glen Tilt in the Scottish Highlands - 150 years after the adults were first seen there.

Holly, who has also been praised for her 'amazing' butterfly-themed painting and ceramics, volunteers with the Highland Branch of Butterfly Conservation. She was nominated in the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Awards by the charity’s Scotland Head of Conservation Dr Tom Prescott.

Tom said: "Holly is a fantastic field recorder with very sharp eyes and incredible amounts of patience - she can spend hours in the field looking for the early stages of some of our scarcer species.  

"She is a regular at volunteer work parties where she is happy to get wet and muddy, often in poor winter weather in the Highlands - rain, snow and ice - to actually make a difference for the species she cares so much about.

"At all these events Holly is by far the youngest attendee, often by a factor of three - despite this she is still happy to come along and share her knowledge and soak up new information."

Holly, who lives in Inverness, started volunteering with Butterfly Conservation's Highland Branch when she was 16 and regularly joins expeditions to find rare species that involve dawn starts, late finishes and camping overnight on remote glens.

The NBN Awards celebrate achievements across the UK in recording wildlife, and Tom said Holly had diligently attended training sessions, joined the annual Scottish Entomological Gathering and used moth traps in her own garden to record local species.

However, he added that Holly’s 'claim to fame' was finding the never-before-seen UK egg batch of the Silver Shade Eana argentana.

The Silver Shade is a delicate white moth with a silvery sheen. It is found across continental Europe and in North America, but the only site it has ever been recorded in the UK is at Glen Tilt. It was first seen there in 1875, but in nearly 150 years, no one had ever seen its eggs or caterpillars.

Holly found the tiny clutch of brown eggs, each just a few millimetres across, as part of a Butterfly Conservation survey day in July 2023. Butterfly Conservation says she is probably the first person in Europe and possibly in the world to ever find the miniscule eggs.

She said: "We had an idea of what we were looking for, but only a guess of what plants it might have been laid on, or even where it would be on the leaf which didn't instil much hope that we would be successful. When I turned the leaf and saw it I couldn't believe my eyes. I was absolutely thrilled and could not stop smiling. I was in total shock we had found it and I think everyone else was, too - especially after already spending a couple rainy days prior without any luck.

"I'm extremely passionate about nature but particularly entomology. Being out recording brings me the greatest amount of pleasure and I am fascinated with how I am still learning more about insects each time I go surveying and trapping. This motivates me to better my understanding of, and nurture an interest in others, of nature and entomology to help conserve them for future generations."

Having made the stunning discovery, Holly has now set her sights on another first - finding the Silver Shade caterpillars when they emerge from hibernation in the spring. 

Tom, who nominated Holly in the NBN Young Person's Award category, open to ages 11-20, added: "This will greatly increase our knowledge of the species to help target conservation action."

However Holly is not the only Butterfly Conservation volunteer up for an award.

Ecologist Dr Katty Baird received national acclaim last year for her book Meetings with Moths – a collection of stories about her work studying lepidoptera across Scotland. Many of her experiences come from volunteering with Butterfly Conservation over the past decade, spending hundreds of hours collecting moth records which she submits to the charity's National Moth Recording Scheme, as well as helping with habitat management and public engagement work. She has been nominated by fellow volunteers for the NBN Award for Terrestrial Wildlife Recording.

Paul Taylor is the County Butterfly Recorder for Ceredigion on the Welsh west coast, organising surveys for rare species including Marsh Fritillaries and Purple Hairstreaks and sharing his records with Butterfly Conservation. He has worked with the charity to create a conservation plan for Marsh Fritillaries and liaises with landowners to find new sites for threatened butterflies and moths. He is also shortlisted for the Terrestrial Wildlife Recording Award.

Kayleigh Woodhouse only started recording wildlife last year after learning about its importance during her MSc in Biodiversity Conservation at Nottingham Trent University, but has volunteered enthusiastically for several organisations in Nottinghamshire including Butterfly Conservation. Importantly, she has helped the East Midlands branch update species distribution maps and action plans for several locally rare butterfly species - the Grizzled Skipper, Dingy Skipper and Green Hairstreak. She is shortlisted for this year's Newcomer Award.

Mark Cubitt from West Lothian has been volunteering with Butterfly Conservation's East Scotland Branch for 16 years and already picked up a gong at the charity's own 2024 Volunteer Awards in June. A retired IT architect, he is now County Moth Recorder for three vice counties across the Lothians, helps with habitat management and makes moth traps to loan to new recorders. He also invented a new tool for dam installations in peat bogs and is website manager for the branch. He is shortlisted for the NBN Verifiers Award.

The NBN Awards winners will be announced at the organisation's annual conference on Thursday, 21 November.

Find out more about volunteering with Butterfly Conservation at butterfly-conservation.org/how-you-can-help/get-involved/volunteering