Trip reports

Butterflies

Tuesday, 2 January 2007

For this talk Sue Smith had another Sue as a helper, and a good, funny job they made of it. With a collection of photos only five short of the British full house, we had plenty of butterflies to look at. The Sues carefully took us through the slides, pointing out the subtle differences between difficult species such as the fritillaries and the skippers. Alas, as with many a bird talk, we found out that there was more decline than expansion in butterfly numbers, but we also learned that greater efforts were being made to monitor and then improve the populations.

Towards the end of the programme we were shown some moths for comparison, and then a selection of the butterflies' food plants.

Altogether an interesting start to the year. Now all we have to do is remember it all until the summer!