May 24th Mousehold Heath

Holly Blue

I did a butterfly survey at Mousehold Heath with Will this afternoon. It started promising enough with a holly blue extracting vital minerals from the mud at the edge of the new pond, but we couldn't count it because we hadn't reached the starting line of our transect to officially tally it off. The first few sections of the transect were pretty good with about 10-11 individuals, including 1-2 speckled woods, 4 large whites, 3 orange-tips, a comma and a green-veined white. But then the weather betrayed us as the sun hid behind cloud cover for the remainder of the transect. It got a bit cold for butterflies and there was a slight cold breeze in the air that didn't help much either. We didn't see a single butterfly to add to our tally, not even a green hairstreak. We will have to try better next time.

Speckled Wood

Comma

Green-veined White

Brown Silver-line Moth

Woodpigeon