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Butterfly Conservation is a partner in a new project with the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

DECIDE aims to encourage targeted recording of those areas where the data available is currently deficient, making the computer models that produce Species Distribution Maps, uncertain.

DECIDE currently focuses on butterflies and moths with maps showing where new records will have most influence on improving species distribution models for these groups. In other words, the maps show where your recording efforts will be most valuable.

Butterfly Conservation has developed a trial methodology to survey for Purple Hairstreaks

which are under recorded on conventional transects. Even if you don't plan to undertake a transect, this makes interesting reading and gives clues as to when and how you might find these elusive butterflies.

Green Hairstreak Species Action Plan.

Just launched (early April 2022). Thanks to Chris Jackson, Emma Gilbert, Melanie Penson and Steve Mathers for all their hard work with this.

Presentations from the 2021 AGM held in March 2022 at Ravenshead.

An update by Chris Jackson

East Midlands Clearwing & Forester Project by Melanie Penson

AGM and Members' Day

Sunday March 20th 2022

Thank you to everyone who attended the Branch AGM on Sunday 20th March.

It was a very enjoyable meeting with excellent talks by Chris Jackson (Notts CC) on the Grizzled Skipper Project and Melanie Penson (Notts/Leics Conservation Officer) on the Clearwing and Forester Project. Thank you also to all those members who presented some very interesting pictures, especially to Christine Maughan who did a presentation on Garden Moths and treated us to some more of her excellent photographs.

A very big thank you also, to all those committee members who helped on the day, Gary did a wonderful job in the 'kitchen'. Melanie made £67 on the tombola and Max was brilliant on the projector. I cannot thank those members who helped on the day enough.

Although not present, we had some very good updates from County Recorders and it was a very enjoyable day.

Our thoughts were with Pat Orpe (Derbyshire Assistant Recorder) after her recent fall and Adrian Russell (Leicestershire Moth Recorder) with serious health problem. Also Mick Ball (Derbyshire Moth Recorder) after his recent stay in hospital.

Jane Broomhead

Help Record Green Hairstreak in Notts

We are asking butterfly watchers to help us evaluate the status of this species over the coming seasons

Wall Brown Still Fuels Ken's 40-Year Recording Career

When Ken Orpe first visited Friargate in May 1981 – an old railway site in the centre of Derby that had been allowed to ‘rewild’ (in today’s vernacular) after Beeching’s axe in the 1960s – the first butterfly he logged was a Wall Brown.............. Read on

Concerns for the West Coast Monarch

The three pictures above, were taken on Wednesday 1st December 2021 at Ellwood Monarch Grove just outside Santa Barbara, California, USA by Ellie Broomhead.

The Monarch is one of my favourite butterflies and the life cycle of the West Coast Monarch is fascinating. Over the past few years their plight has become dire with their over-wintering eucalyptus groves being eroded by gales, building and fires. Today, my daughter, who lives near the Grove, was talking to a butterfly expert taking photographs on the site and he said last year there were no swathes of the butterflies visible at Ellwood, but today there was one and many butterflies flying round the tops of the trees. Let's hope it survives as there is nothing more beautiful than seeing these butterflies warming themselves in mid-March before leaving for their summer holiday in the Rocky Mountains.

Jane Broomhead EMBC Branch Organiser

Amazing photos of Purple Emperor from egg to one-week old!

These photos were all taken by Samantha Brownley in the Sherwood Forest area in 2021. They show an egg of Purple Emperor about to hatch, the actual hatch, the one-day old larva and a one-week old first instar.

Big Count at National Stone Centre

On Sunday 25th July 2021, East Midlands Butterfly Conservation joined forces with the National Stone Centre, near Wirksworth, to help mark this year’s Big Butterfly Count (16th July – 8th August).

The two organisations welcomed visitors to this attractive and varied site that usually focuses largely on geology, but on this occasion switched attention to butterflies. And they and the families that turned up to enjoy the bright and (occasionally) sunny conditions were not disappointed with an impressive 16 species noted in just a few hours.

Branch Organiser, Jane Broomhead was able to stage her first sales display for a long time, while Derbyshire Recorder, Ken Orpe welcomed visitors – many of them families with youngsters – and organised a small body of experienced guides to take the visitors around, to find and help identify the butterflies.

A wealth of wild flowers poked their heads out from the rich grassland, one habitat the butterflies clearly enjoyed, while the sparser quarry areas nevertheless still held a good range of species.

On the edge of one of these more open areas, the day’s main highlight was discovered and observed by a few lucky visitors as a White-letter Hairstreak flitted around brambles before settling on the flower heads of marjoram plants.

Fresh Commas, Small Coppers, Common Blue, Small Skippers and Small Heath added colour, a few Red Admirals and Peacocks had emerged, Large Skippers and Small Tortoiseshells were seen, and most plentiful of all were Meadow Brown, Ringlet and Gatekeepers among the grassy areas, while good numbers of Large, Small and Green-veined Whites sped across the site. The day-flying Shaded Broad-bar and Six-spot Burnet moths were also noted.

Rhona Goddard, BC Midlands Regional Officer has arranged four visits to the East Midlands to look at key sites listed on the STW funding bid. Her first two visits have been to central and southern Notts and the picture below shows site owners/managers, our conservation officer, county recorders and transect members, at a central Notts site on 10th June 2021.

The idea is for Rhona to get to know our area, the diversity of the sites we have and to dispel the myth that the EM is lacking in butterflies and moths. If Rhona feels work can be done in conjunction with those who know the sites then she is happy to try to help. The prority species are Grizzled Skipper, Dingy Skipper and Small Heath and some moths.

July visits are scheduled for Derbyshire, including our wonderful Hoe Grange Quarry and Leicestershire sites will be visited during August/September.

Book Review - Aberrations in British Butterflies

The first volume in a series on aberrations of British Butterflies has been published beginning with the Comma and Ringlet and is reviewed here by Melanie Penson.

Please see below an example of the new signs designed by our Newsletter Editor, Eliot Taylor, which will be soon in place at The Scone & Devon Park, Newark, Vicar Water at Clipstone and Sherwood Heath at Ollerton roundabout. The Branch wishes to thank Eliot for creating these really fantastic signs. We also wish to thank Lynn Preece at Newark & Sherwood District Council for her enthusiasm and support for the Branch.

The lovely Jane and Melanie have been busy today at Sconce and Devon Park in Newark, planting Bird’s-foot Trefoil on the historic Sconce.

Retirement of Bill Bacon

Our former chairman Bill Bacon, has decided to step down from the committee and his role as Grizzled Skipper Project Officer after many decades of hard work for the Branch.