Last Sunday we entered the world of butterflies via butterfly expert Phil Harris. He took us out for a four and half-hour butterfly foray. It was an amazing time. As soon as we hit the path, not only did we come across a colony of about 40 Silver-studded Blue, we realised that in our midst was our first theirwork hero. Phil led us through a journey that none of us had experienced before. In no less than about a 2 mile length of land we wound our way through snake pits, found disbanded parking-lots, investigated miniature stinging nettle tents and sought out rare moth sand tunnels. Phil lives up the road, and so what’s more, not only is he as passionate and enigmatic as the great Simon King, he’s green - just like our picnic, he was sourced locally.

Phil offered to take us out again in the Autumn. We’re close to booking the date already. We saw 2 of our target speices, the Silver-studded Blue as mentioned, and the Small Heath. Our unsighted was the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. Incidentals we picked up were 1 Painted Lady, and 6 Meadow Browns. We maybe saw a Brown Argus of which Phil says ‘the 50% sighting of Brown Argus should be further investigated during the second brood in August to ascertain whether this is a definite site… Brown Argus are quite rare along this stretch of South coast of Cornwall’. In the meantime, we’re having a moth and bat night, and there are plans building for a water mapping session.

We collected a huge amount of data from this walk. This will be entered onto the map via me, and a computer butterflyshop session later in the summer. More on this later. and photos will come later.

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