by Bill Shreeves

Much careful planning had been undertaken for this survey. Seven circular walks had been prepared to cover as many of the unrecorded local km squares as possible. Five of the walks set out and returned to the Scout Hut at Yetminster and the other two centred on the Rest and Welcome Inn near Melbury Osmund and the P.O. at Thornford. Grateful thanks are due to, Betty Evans and the local ramblers who checked the walk routes and came round to act as guides, Judy Nash who provided publicity via a group photo and articles in the local press, Sylvia Dicker who looked after the Scout Hall and the small Dorset Butterfly Conservation exhibition, the DBC identifiers who led the 7 walks and, not least, the other volunteers, many of them from the butterfly workshops held earlier in the year, who were distributed between the walks. For once we were rewarded with excellent weather and it is a relief to report that the Black Panther, alleged by the local newspaper to have been seen regularly in the area, kept a low profile!

The raw statistics demonstrate the success of the day. A total of 2,788 butterflies were counted, representing 22 different species from 44 different km squares, 38 of which had not yet been visited for the years 2000-03. Walk 5, under the guidance of Tony Long and Joan Durran counted the most butterflies (630) while walks 2 and 7, with Bill Shreeves and Brian Dicker as identifiers, recorded the largest number of species (18 each). The Gatekeeper was easily the most numerous butterfly (1,266 counted), followed a long way behind by the Small White (373) and the Meadow Brown (313). The Gatekeeper also appeared in no less than 53 out of the total of 63 km squares passed through by the surveyors but somewhat surprisingly the Green veined White came next (53 km squares) followed closely by the Small White (51).

The most interesting records were for the Brown Argus in squares just to the south-west of Clifton Wood on walk 1 and to the west of Thornford on walk 7. The species has never before been recorded in any Dorset atlas in these areas. Three of the nine Purple Hairstreak squares recorded were also ‘first evers’ – Paul Butter’s walk near Stockwood (ST.58/07) and with David and Anna Barwick, north of Whitfield Woods (ST.61-2/11). It was very gratifying to find Silver Washed Fritillaries recorded in 14 km squares and even more so, after checking the records, to discover that no less than 9 of these were entirely new first ever records! Indeed all the walks were turning up the commoner species in entirely new squares. Just to take 2 examples;out of many, Lawrie and Bridget de Whalley’s group found Common Blues in 4 squares and 3 of these had never appeared in any Dorset atlas! Richard Belding’s ‘team’ encountered 2 of only 3 Marbled Whites found during the survey at ST.58/09 to the west of the Macmillan Way. This proved to be a totally new km square for the species and since our survey was too late to catch their peak it would be worthwhile to search earlier in July in a future year.

Altogether it was a useful survey, which added many new records, gave those relatively new to Butterflies a useful day’s experience in recording and forged an alliance with the ramblers. Hopefully the same walk routes can be walked again in future years and even more useful comparative data collected.