Spring is here! The birds are singing and ten species of butterfly have been sighted: it’s going to be a good butterfly year!

Five transect (butterfly monitoring) walks in North Dorset are having problems with not enough people to cover all the weeks needed (this is mainly due to retirement and ill health).

Transect walks are undertaken at specific places, using set routes, and a walk is carried out each week from the beginning of April to the end of September. Most walks have a number of walkers who share the weeks between them depending on what dates they can each do. You need to have basic butterfly identification skills, but we can usually get someone to help you initially and you can find out what species have been seen where on the walk in the past, which is a good clue to what you might see.

Please could you consider offering some help?

The walks are all in north Dorset:-

• Fifehead Wood (coordinated by Carole Drake)
• Stubhampton Bottom (coordinated by Carole Drake)
• Fontmell Down (coordinated by James Cartwright)
• Hod Hill (coordinated by Carole Drake)
• Duncliffe Wood (coordinated by Carole Drake)

To reply, offering help or for more information, either:-

• Use Assemble to email me (Stephen Brown) back or email the coordinators directly – they both have Assemble accounts
• Email me via [email protected] (put fao Steve Brown)

The map shows the positions of the walks listed above; the coordinators will send you more detailed routes.