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The warm spring sunshine is bringing out butterflies on the reserve, so keep a lookout and see what you can spot. On Monday we saw 3 Peacock, 3 Brimstone and 3 Small Tortoiseshell butterflies. This summer we were hoping to run a butterfly transect on the reserve. This is when a defined route is walked every week by volunteers and observations are recorded and sent to the UK Butterfly Monitoring Service. The transects are now suspended because of the Coronavirus Pandemic, however, individual volunteers will be walking the route and recording their observations as part of their daily exercise and we’ll share their observations with you. We have been a lot of work improving habitats for butterflies by planting food plants for caterpillars and nectar plants for butterflies. Caterpillars of Small Tortoiseshell and Peacocks love nettles, whilst Brimstone caterpillars love Alder Buckthorn which we planted over the winter. Let us know if you spot anything else.

All images from Butterfly Conservation