Have been away at a meeting in Oxford all week so not much opportunity to spend time watching nature. Did manage to complete at least one butterfly count each day for Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly count, which runs to the end of this week. The lovely thing about these 15 minute counts is that you can do them wherever you are and you don’t need a lot of time to complete them, so they fit into a lunchtime or a coffee break. You just have to spend 15 minutes watching for and identifying the butterflies you see. Most of my counts last week were in the grounds of St Anne’s college where the meeting was being held and although I only saw Large and Small whites and Gatekeepers, all the data combines to paint a picture of the butterfly population across the country.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marrowp/4138533191/
St Annes College Oxford
photo by pmecologic (http://www.flickr.com/photos/marrowp/)
I also did a count at Oxford Station whilst waiting for the train to come back to London which turned up Large White and Peacock plus an overhead Red Kite – the first I have seen over central Oxford.
Peacock Butterfly
photo by Kieth Laverack (http://www.flickr.com/photos/akandbdl/)
For more details of the Big Butterfly Count go to http://www.bigbutterflycount.org/
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