Tagged eggs warning

For the second time we have had tagged eggs removed from one of our Worc nature reserves presumably by a butterfly breeder/collector.  The incident happened at Trench Wood reserve where eggs had been marked ironically to ensure that they were not removed by accident as part of routine ride maintenance.  Over 20 eggs were taken, virtually every single egg laid at Trench Wood this winter!  This follows a similar incident at Grafton Wood back in 2010.  It is pretty appalling to think that there are unscrupulous individuals around that would take eggs from a nature reserve in this way but clearly there are and by publicising the incident we hope that similar incidents can be avoided.  For our own part at West Midlands Butterfly Conservation we shall not...

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Annual Transect egg count 6th December 2014

Eighteen wonderful volunteers turned up for the count, travelling from far and wide.  Thank you everyone for making such an effort. The count was low - given that the count the previous year was the highest ever with 651 eggs found on the day along the 500m foreshore transect. However, the bigger picture shows that 232 is the seventh highest number out of 20 counts, so pretty good overall. West Williamston SSSI Annual Brown Hairstreak...

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West Williamston Egg Predation Survey – blog no 9 mid November 2014

The big miss-hap, or ‘accidents do happen’ Before the cut ………….. After the cut ..................... Our study site at West Williamston was divided into 2 halves ….. one - an area outside the electric fence consisting of the youngest blackthorn and surveyed (after the first two weeks) by me, and the other - the area between the electric fence and the field boundary - surveyed by David (Redhead) and consisting of 1 to 3 year old blackthorn much denser in nature. Shortly after the eighth...

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