Bye-bye Butterfly?

This week the Butterfly Conservation Trust is urging everyone to spend 15 minutes looking for and recording the butterflies that inhabit their garden or local area. There are more details and forms to fill in and return on their website, but it is best to choose a sunny day.

Loss of habitat and climate change are two possible reasons for their decline. There are too many gardens covered with decking and used for offroad parking . Butterflies need flowers that that attract insects. Many of the wildflowers that we have planted have survived and are attracting butterflies, bees, hover flies and other pollinating insects.

But why a photo of a Cinnabar Moth caterpillar? Well, environmental scientists are concerned about their welfare as well. This one was tucking into some ragwort in Buckle's Wood and although this plant is poisonous to livestock, and the caterpillars that feed on it, distasteful to predators, it would be sad if both disappeared from our landscape.