The Big Butterfly Count

Another blog post written by Bug Mad Girl ...

 

Today we went to the Aston Clinton Ragpits to do a Big Butterfly Count. It's a nature reserve managed by BBOWT and was full of wild flowers. It was so colorful!

 

Even though it was a bit cloudy, there were masses of butterflies flying about and the first thing we saw as we went through the gate was a Red Admiral! Some of the butterflies and day flying moths we saw were:



Six-spot burnet moth





Brimstone





Chalkhill blue




Large skipper




Large white




Longhorn moth with big green eyes




Marbled white

Holly blue

We checked under the sheets of corrugated iron that were left out and found 8 slowworms, 4 of them were under one sheet. It was really cold last night and they'd probably slithered under there to get warm.

 

We also saw lots of ants nests under the iron sheets!

 

 

I also saw a green woodpecker, a dragonfly and found some treasure in the woods including an egg shell, some feathers, a beautiful piece of bark and a massive bone. I took the bone home and compared it to my dogs upper leg bones. It was about the same size (15cm long), so I think it must have come from a fox or badger.




Treasure

The totals for our butterfly count were 1 small copper, 2 red admirals, 3 six-spot burnets, 10 small whites, 19 meadow browns, 2 green veined whites, 17 large whites, 2 small skippers, 10 gatekeepers, 1 holly blue, 6 marbled whites, 2 ringlets, 3 brimstones, 4 peacocks, 1 silver washed fritillary, 3 chalkhill blues, 1 large skipper and 1 common blue!

It was very exciting to see so much nature, then we went home and I entered our results on the Big Butterfly Count website http://www.bigbutterflycount.org/.