Slightly iffy conditions

14/7/2023

GK, BG and Liz North walked this week's transect on Thursday. Liz has worked on a few of our main WoodChip tasks earlier this year and proved very knowledgeable and useful on this week's transect.

We missed the best day this week, Monday, and Thursday was the only reasonable choice remaining before the end of the week, The weather was warm, rather than hot, and was mainly cloudy: it rained for a short time when we were in Fames Rough but towards the end of our walk we had a glimpse of the sun. These slightly iffy conditions didn't totally deter the butterflies and we ended up with a fairly good count of 339 (approx half of last week's score) from 16 species.

Meadow Browns, Marbled Whites, Small/Essex Skippers, Gatekeepers and Ringlets provided our highest numbers of the day, and we also saw the season's first Silver-washed Fritillaries.

Here you'll find a spreadsheet showing the weekly counts for this season and those of previous years.

Survey by Brian Gardner, Graham K and Liz North
submitted to Butterfly Conservation (UKBMS).
Report by Brian Gardner. Pics by Graham K
Click pics to enlarge.