Dorset butterfly updates
We have recently discovered a possible issue regarding photos sent by email to our website at [email protected] Continue reading
Marion lives in Preston and is very used to seeing Lulworth Skippers nectaring on Valerian in her garden but since 2016 she has noticed a large number of them regularly settling on the white painted back wall of her house and wonders why there? Continue reading
Evidence of Large Tortoiseshell eggs & larvae has been found on Portland – the first time they have been detected wild in the UK for 70 years! Continue reading
Can you help us consolidate the good progress made with the Elm tree records in Dorset following Nigel Spring’s recent appeal for help finding Elm trees? Continue reading
White-letter Hairstreak butterflies are quite rare in Dorset; their caterpillars breed on elm trees, so finding the trees will help us find the butterflies. You can help us map some of the remaining healthy Elm trees in Dorset and by so doing help us locate some of our missing White-letter Hairstreaks (WLH) Continue reading
The Friends of Castle Cove Beach Charity has launched a new competition designed to spread a bit of positivity during lockdown. Continue reading
Paul has sent us this remarkable video clip showing a Painted Lady Butterfly emerging from the chrysalis with the following comments:
My partner is a primary school teacher and the school had some of those butterfly kits where the caterpillars live in a pot and feed on nutrient in the bottom of the pot. As most of the children are not currently in school we thought it would be a good idea to do a ‘time lapse’ of one of the painted lady butterflies emerging from the chrysalis to show to the children.
The video is made up of around 11 to 12 photos a minute converted to video, compressing about 45 minutes elapsed time into just over a minute. I used a Raspberry Pi microcomputer with a camera module and wrote some software to take photos every 5 seconds or so.
Hope you enjoy it -the video lasts for just over a minute but be patient as it takes about 10 seconds to start.
Wren Franklin has sent us an amazing picture of a Purple Hairstreak caterpillar found in a Hazel nut shell by his three and a half year old son.
The annual caterpillar silk webs phenomenon
It’s the time of year when we get many emails expressing concern about the activities of web-spinning moth caterpillars that appear in spring in our hedgerows and trees.
This year we would like to collect records of these sightings with photos. Continue reading
The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme organisers have announced that transect walking may resume, with certain precautions. Continue reading