CallumMac.  If you can find out from your grandmother what model of Phonak she has, then I can make some enquiries. Sorry, Granny's not terribly technologically-minded and it was hard enough to find out the name of the brand from her - I'm not sure I'll be able to extract this additional detail! In...

Hi Jack. Your description of your issues with NHS hearing aids really rang a bell with me - my granny (roughly your age) has been having almost exactly the same problems, and describing them to us in exactly the same way, for a number of years. About nine months ago she went down the private route v...

I share your pain! I have often been bitten by ants whilst going in for those key butterfly shots. Also, stung by nettles, and experienced many other discomforts such as tick bites, cuts, bruises, near-death experiences on scree slopes and cliff edges.... It's the price we pay for our art! :lol: In...

20/06/2020 - North York Moors On Saturday, we set off for the Moors early, with a series of site visits planned that should have brought new orchids, odonates and butterflies for the year. In the end it didn't pan out that way. I know there are others on the forum whose interests are broader than s...

Those NBAs are very attractive Callum even with their muted livery :D :mrgreen: A species I've yet to catch up with and the same goes for the Large Heaths :mrgreen: :mrgreen: Maybe next year :wink: They're lovely aren't they - despite the similarity, they always seem to me to be a deeper, more choc...

A male butterfly (abdomen extends beyond wings, is slender, and has visible claspers giving it the squared-off appearance), and therefore a Brown Argus.

Through one thing and another (mainly inclement weather!), butterflying outings have been relatively thin on the ground lately. However, a few good ones to report on from the last week or so! 11/06/2020 - Smardale Gill On Thursday we took the day off work and drove over the A66 to meet my parents fo...

Those who have read Matthew Oates' new book, His Imperial Majesty , right to the end will have noticed this entry on p390: HIM-in-Yorkshire-p390.jpg With this in mind, the Yorkshire branch of Butterfly Conservation has today announced its intention to offer a prize for the first (or should I say, ne...

Made the trip to Smardale Gill yesterday, taking advantage of the current stage of lockdown easing to meet my (Cumbria-based) parents for a walk. Northern Brown Argus were abundant in the brief patches of morning sunshine, with some already looking quite worn but others very freshly emerged. IMG_022...

Sorry to hear about your SSB site Dave. Up here we have a similar story, with an ongoing fire at Hatfield Moor (one of the Large Heath sites on the Humberhead Peatlands) having been burning for the best part of three weeks already. Probably over 600 ha of the site has burned (~40% of the SSSI). Toda...

David M wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:15 pm I'm assuming these were sighted somewhere other than Collard Hill?

Definitely, since Collard Hill isn't in the Cotswolds

Daneway Banks is the only publicised site in the Cotswolds - anywhere else, as has already been said, keep it to yourself!

Thanks all. The GH pairing was very lucky, I was fully focussed on the Red Grouse when my partner spotted them and called me over! You sure get a good range of wildlife up there. I think what I've come to realise over the course of the lockdown restrictions is that while we get a good proportion of ...

Some debate as to its providence, but a credible record of Long-tailed Blue was received yesterday by BC Yorkshire branch. Seen late afternoon in the company of several Painted Ladies in a member's garden in Withernsea (on the east coast a few miles north of Spurn Point). Whilst deliberate release a...

Quite why this plant's name has connotations of weakness I don't know; they're often the last to wave the white flag at altitude on the continent and, of course, they are attractive to many high-altitude butterflies, Fritillaries in particular. Yes indeed. We recently learned that the Mountain vari...

I think it is a sawfly - possibly Rhogogaster viridis, though I believe there are several similar species, and I have no idea how to separate them!

Some like it hot, and this ain't one of them. Aldina Franco's work in the early 00's ( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01180.x ) shows quite clearly that recent distribution changes in this species are strongly linked to warming climate - populations go extinct at t...

I have very mixed feelings about this week's change in lockdown restrictions. I fear it may be too far too soon, and we may see a second spike of infections. However, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I've been out and about, making my first visit of the year to a few favourite sites...

In some respects I share your view, Neil, but then I've never felt a need to see "everything" in a year. Butterflies are a bit of a strange case, in that it's theoretically possible but still challenging to "do a Barkham", so I understand why some folk attempt it year after year....

I do wonder if the overall warming trend has been enough to allow horseshoe vetch to grow in any of these sheltered valleys (that so resemble bits of the downland of southern England in a lot of ways). There are records of Horseshoe Vetch at a couple of sites - from the BSBI maps I reckon Thixendal...

Thanks all! Wurzel - I'll keep an eye out for that bee. It looks stunning! Not many records up my way but from the distribution map I suspect that it might just be under-recorded. David - It's certainly interesting to note that I have seen a number of things in this lockdown period that I would usua...