2 minute read
The Importance of Butterfly Branches
Richard Stewart
I think that my membership of other Butterfly Branches is still the highest among Butterfly Conservation members - a total of ten. I must admit this was initially done as a necessary way of keeping in touch with other parts of the country when I was the Suffolk Butterfly Recorder and involved in the nationwide Millennium Survey. Now of course more websites are available.
This multiple membership has produced many benefits. First there are regular newsletters, and over the years I have contributed to all ten. I have also occasionally attended both field and indoor meetings, both involving early starts from Ipswich. Over the years I have made many contacts, and Marie and I have been on holidays arranged by Branches, to areas that include the Lake District, Isle of Wight and the Spanish Pyrenees on three occasions with two different Branches.
This membership has also given me chances to see many species no longer found in Suffolk and such information has largely contributed to my seeing sixty-one species in this country. I would consider that the other great benefit of having close contacts with other Branches is being able to have local knowledge about species and where to find them. Otherwise you could travel some distance, spend many hours exploring a site, yet end up frustrated. Local knowledge sought out beforehand would give precise location details - except of course for particularly rare and vulnerable species. You don’t of course actually have to be a Branch member to avail yourself of this knowledge as it can usually be provided by the County Recorder or Branch Contact, these being listed in the national magazine or on websites. Our own Branch regularly uses this facility on out of Suffolk trips or longer weekends away. Perhaps the best recent example was on our day trip on May 12th 2010. Colin Lucas was our site expert and local contact, on a relatively dull and windy day when we could have spent fruitless hours around Totternhoe Quarry without finding any of the rare Duke of Burgundy. He took us to a deep gully, the remains of a mineshaft, just as the sun emerged. Most of us would have dismissed it since there was a steep descent to a burnt out motorbike at the bottom, surrounded by beer cans. This was however a suntrap, the temperature much higher than elsewhere, and there we found three Duke of Burgundy and a Dingy Skipper.
Think about joining other Branches - it doesn’t cost much extra and gives you a detailed insight into other areas and their varied moth and butterfly activities.
Duke of Burgundy by Douglas Hammersley
