Welsh Brown Hairstreaks

[David M]

Just thought I'd copy and paste a message sent to me by Nikki Sanderson, who is one of the volunteers helping the Brown Hairstreak to thrive in west Wales.

Looks as though this year has been pretty good (has it been similarly good at other BH sites around the country?)

The following is a summary of events thus far in 2010:

A record year all round for Brown Hairstreak butterflies at
West Williamston SSSI- Pembrokeshire

Following the outstanding record number of 301 Brown Hairstreak butterfly eggs found along the foreshore transect, and 29+ eggs found on a single old Blackthorn bush last December, the summer months have proved to be just as fruitful on this exceptional Wildlife Trust reserve in Pembrokeshire.

After several larvae were found moving around Blackthorn leaves during daytime in spring, the first adult was recorded egg laying in the Butterfly Glade on 15th August. It appears that this was possibly the first BHS recorded in Wales this year. By the end of September more than 44 females had been recorded throughout the reserve, with three at a time on two separate occasions. Several sightings were also made on the Limestone Ridge. Adults have not been seen there before – indeed until quite recently records consisted of only one or two sightings a year, making all these records particularly rewarding.

On 26th September, and despite some torrential rain over the previous couple of days, a female was observed a third of the way up in Ash, where she remained until 4.10pm – a very late-in-the-day sighting.

Our latest sightings this year were on Friday 8th October when four females were seen in the Glade at the same time, one on Saturday, and a remarkable 5 sightings on Sunday 10th in pleasant sunshine. These are some of the latest ever records for Pembrokeshire, and with the good weather continuing, who knows if there are still more sightings to come.

The ‘assembly’ or ‘significant’ trees have still not been located at West Williamston, and so achieving this will be our challenge for next year.

Nikki Anderson and Jean Hambly – October 2010 Wildlife Trust South & West Wales volunteers

[Michaeljf]

Hi David,
I met Nikki again today at the South Wales Branch AGM held at Kenfig Nature Reserve. She had copies of a book she has put together showing the work done at the West Williamston site plus pictures of the Blackthorn and eggs etc...unfortunately the AGM was in full flow when I arrived, and never got a chance to look at the book. All the same we had a nice chat after the AGM as everyone was packing up and I hope she'll have a look at UKButterflies site soon as I told her what a great resource it is . I really enjoyed the afternoon at Kenfig and was only sorry that Richard Smith didn't give a longer presentation about the High Brown Fritillaries at his Old Castle Down site near Ewenny. There was a good-turn out at the event and plenty of really nice, enthusiastic and learned folks there including some excellent presentations:)
Michael

[David M]

Good stuff, Michael. Sorry I couldn't be there - got to commute regularly to the Isle of Man to see my mum who is ill right now (and I have accountancy exams to boot )

Is there no way this forum could be merged with the Butterfly Conservation site? One of the things that has struck me is how little is known about UKB (I bumped into Maurice Avent and Hugo Brooke at West Yatton Down in July and neither seemed to be aware of our forum).

This is a shame as bringing everyone together would undoubtedly have a positive effect.

At the moment it's like the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea in Monty Pythons 'Life of Brian'.

I'd love to get more involved with BC but information is often hard to come by as different sectors often comminicate solely within themselves.

There's no real excuse for this anymore with the advent of the world wide web, but etiquette being what it is I don't feel it's appropriate for a pleb like me to be pointing this out.

[Gruditch]

Hi Dave, if you look at the logo at the top of this page, you will see we are in association with Butterfly Conservation. All the profits from the UKB stall go to the BC, we produce the calender in association with BC, who again get all the profit. The chairman elect for Hants & IOW BC is the flipping owner of this site.

I don't think we are totally anonymous with everyone at Butterfly Conservation



Regards Gruditch

[David M]

Hi Dave, if you look at the logo at the top of this page, you will see we are in association with Butterfly Conservation. All the profits from the UKB stall go to the BC, we produce the calender in association with BC, who again get all the profit. The chairman elect for Hants & IOW BC is the flipping owner of this site.

I don't think we are totally anonymous with everyone at Butterfly Conservation

Regards Gruditch

Yes, I'm aware of the link on this site, Gary, but the problem is that there isn't a reciprocal link on the BC site. This means that anyone viewing the BC site would remain ignorant of this forum, which is a shame as there are some highly knowledgeable people on here (yourself included) and access to very interesting and useful information based on personal experience which is often a godsend to people like me.

The BC site has drop down menus on the main page, but none of them lead to a discussion board. Personally, I think it'd be a great idea if this website had such a link on BC, but as I said in my previous post, it's not really my place to be suggesting this.

Just an idea, but I don't see what harm it would do. On the contrary, it would probably be most beneficial; after all, we're all here to find out about, protect and support butterflies.

[Pete Eeles]

Oops! Only just read this thread!

Some history ... I met up with Martin Warren a few years ago to specifically discuss the relative roles of the BC website and UKB and how we would complement one another. The agreement was, in essence, that all conservation and society content would be housed on the BC website, and all community content would be housed on UKB. One of the primary reasons is that BC needs to focus on conservation and their staff don't have time to interact in the same manner we do on the forums - this is best left to keen amateurs, and i have to say that i think we do a great job at getting our own questions answered between ourselves. I certainly get may questions answered without hassling BC!

If folks involved in BC are unaware of UKB, and even though I have a very different perspective than most, I suspect that it's because they're not IT-savvy and possibly don't use the internet to any great extent. On the other hand, I know of many many BC members and branch committee members that are signed up! BC knows that it needs to move with the times and I've been asked on several occasions to help them with IT-related projects, so consider any confusion to be the result of BC needing to move with the times and dragging certain members along with them. I expect there to be quite a few positive changes over the next few years with regard to better use of IT, whether this is recording or sending out branch newsletters or the Butterfly magazine. I'd certainly be in favour of receiving my correspondence by email rather than by "dead tree" format.

But I will mention an explicit link to the forums to Martin Warren at the national AGM in Cambridge.

[EDIT] We are listed under the not-very-obvious links page at: http://www.butterfly-conservation.org/t ... links.html

Cheers,

- Pete