Butterflies at Lauriston Farm

I'm continuing to regularly survey butterflies in two sites in Edinburgh. Today, unusually for this year so far, the weather was almost perfect while I was surveying butterflies at Lauriston Farm. I recorded a total of 43 butterflies (which means there will have been a lot more around this hundred acre site.) Not so long ago, we never saw Small Skippers in Scotland, now they are common (they've moved north from England as the climate has been warming) and always nice to see, I saw eight today, including this one:

I also saw eighteen Meadow Browns, ten Large Whites, four Small Whites, two Red Admirals and one Ringlet.

I also saw a couple of impressive black beetles

a Roe Deer and several birds including House Martins and a Buzzard.

I'm doing transect surveys as part of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (I walk a particular route on a regular basis and record the butterflies I see). At the moment, though, there is a large scale butterfly survey that anyone in the UK can take part in - Big Butterfly Count.

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There are two forthcoming themed weeks to celebrate nature: 

Love Parks Week (26 July -  4 August).

National Marine Week (27 July -11 August) which is longer than a week!