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Surveying butterflies in Scotland

Guest blogger

Guest blogger today is Tom Prescott from Butterfly Conservation Scotland. 

Tom Prescott

The Chequered Skipper is a small yet very attractive and active butterfly that is regarded by most butterfly enthusiasts as a great rarity, being restricted in the United Kingdom to parts of Lochaber and Argyll in western Scotland, following its extinction in the English east Midlands in 1976. It is also an elusive species, only being seen in Scotland for the first time in 1942, proving how difficult it is to detect due its small size, quick dashing flight, short flight-period, remoteness of its colonies and only being active on sunny days in late May and June; a rarity in itself in the generally damp and cloudy climate of western Scotland. As a result butterfly lovers travel hundreds of miles to make the pilgrimage to catch up with this enigmatic insect but usually to just one or two very well known sites, perpetuating the myth that this is a very rare insect.

Chequered SKipper

Photo by Dave Whitaker. 



However, computer modelling suggests that the butterfly maybe under-recorded by as much as 80% at a 1km resolution i.e. it should occur in four times as many of the blue 1km squares on an Ordnance Survey map than it currently does. In 2012 and 2013 Butterfly Conservation Scotland encouraged its volunteers and members of the public to look for Chequered Skipper in the top one hundred 1km squares predicted by the modelling to be the most suitable for the butterfly, but where it had not previously been recorded. This has resulted in the butterfly being found in 68 new 1km squares thereby increasing its range by over 27%. So it is comforting to know that one of our bonniest and scarcest insects is not as rare as we first thought and members of the public can readily discover new colonies. The survey is being repeated again in 2014, for more information please visit www.butterfly-conservation.org/chequeredskipper.

Although this survey is restricted to Scotland there are several other ways that you can get involved with butterflies and butterfly recording throughout the country; here are just two suggestions.

Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey

This survey aims to monitor the changing abundance of widespread butterfly species across the general countryside. It requires up to two visits annually to a specific 1km square to simply record and count butterflies. Visit www.ukbms.org/wcbs.aspx

Big Butterfly Count

This comprises a simple survey in which you count how many of each different type of butterfly that you see during a 15 minute period. It can be done anywhere where you might see butterflies, from your garden, school grounds or nearby park, to fields and woods. Participants can carry out as many counts as they wish and in doing so will be taking part in the biggest survey of butterflies in the world! In 2014 the count will run for three weeks from Saturday 19th July to Sunday 10th August. For more information visit www.bigbutterflycount.org

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