www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

There is something I wanted to do next year, but not 100% sure on how about going to do this.

Looking around my local area, I see many species of plant and butterfly life and different habitats. I want to monitor and record all species of plant and butterflies in this area and release my findings.

I know how to record grid references and want to map out certian areas. There is this one area not frar from my house that has:

4-5 fields, woods on all sides and a river running through it and there used to be a large elm wood, but its all dead now due to Dutch elm disease.

I have noticed that this area has most species of butterly that are found in my area:

Painted Lady, Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Speckled Wood, Orange-Tip, Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Large White, Small White, Green Veined White.

Moths I know of:

Some tortrix moths, Some other micros, Six Spot burnet, Silver Ground Carpets (everywhere), garden carpets and probably more.

In total, in this whole area I want to study, I have seen:

Painted Lady, Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Speckled Wood, Orange-Tip, Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Large White, Small White, Green Veined White, Holly Blue, Common Blue, Small Copper and Clouded Yellows.

I was told by Trevor Boyd fron N.I. butterfly conservation that he was suprised I had not seen any wood white before.

Since I am really the only person who can record all this in this area I was thinking of doing this:

Taking a photo of the area, grid reference that area and record all plants and leps I found and update it daily. (just that I may record same butterfly/moth more than once, and want to try and not do that)

When would be a good time to start this? Not going to start this year. But I had this idea on my mind for a while now.

I have noticed too that, holly blues are now all over this area, except in one place, but I want fidn out about them in the different areas. One area, it sommes there is only a pring brood, but in other areas, there is a summer brood too. These two areas are far enough aprart, but not too far away. Just wondered on why a spring brood and no summer? But summer broods everywhere else.

If you have any comments, ideas, suggestions it would help.

Dave
One of the best methods of surveying an area is to do a regular walk or Transect.
Firstly, plan the walk you wish to do covering as many different areas you wish.
Sketch the plan on to a map (Make it yourself, or copy an O/S map or downoad a map or aerial photo from multimap or similar).
Now, do the walk, and time yourself (at a leisurely pace) from each check point to the next.
Make the check points very obvious - intersections in paths, gates, a particularly conspicuous tree, or similar. This is so that you may get someone else to walk it for you if you are away at all.
Then you walk the path on a regular basis, recording species, numbers, and sexes (if poss) of all butterflies within 3m of either side of your path within each section.
Always try to take the same time to walk the same bit of path. (e.g. don't 'hang about' waiting for a butterfly to fly into your catchment area!).
Done over a number of years this will give really good ideas of changes in populations, changes in first and last seen dates, and similar.
Personally I would concentrate on just butterflies - trying to include too many species will either get confusing, or make the walk hours long!
Talking into a small voice recorder (we used to call them dictaphones) is much easier than writing stuff down.
You can load the data into a home-made spreadsheet, or get hold of a purpose built bit of software called Transectwalker.
Finally - read this - it is excellent-
http://www.dorsetbutterflies.com/whatare.htm
Good luck Dave - a very valuable exercise.
Hamearis

Thanks, I will check that out. Good idea.

I use a digital dictaphone on all my butterfly expeditions. As Hamearis says, this is far easier than writing things down and you can make fuller and more descriptive observations on the spot, while it is happening.

Guy