Have you ever thought you have identified a butterfly  – and then got home and thought “did I really see that?” Georgie Laing did and tells us about it:

That was my experience on the Weymouth Relief Road butterfly monitoring walk last week with the grandchildren (aged 4 and 8) .  I asked them to call out when they saw a butterfly and shout out what they saw– “Brown”, “Yellow” , “Blue” they would say.  Then we saw there were two shades of blue – bright blue and “chalky” blue.  Did we really see Chalkhill Blues?  After doing the Perryfields butterfly monitoring walk on Portland earlier that day, when I had definitely seen Chalkhills, I felt reasonably confident that these were that species – but everything flew so fast!

Then we got home and I entered the records on the UK Butterfly Monitoring website and checked back on earlier records.  Chalkhills had only been seen at this site in 2019 – and then only one record.

Mmmm.  Need to check. So I emailed Phil Sterling, the co-ordinator of the Weymouth Relief Road walk, who contacted his team of walkers.  By the next sunny day there were several people out looking, and bingo – we got a positive photo identification from Mike Lewis.

And how did the children feel?  So proud that their observation had created such interest and they had rediscovered a rare butterfly.