Butterfly habitat

Thursday 12th November 2020

Outdoors for a practical today - over in Cirencester Park doing some glade clearing. There are some Pearl Bordered Fritillary butterflies in the Park - they need quite a specific habitat which allows the butterflies to feed on violas during spring and the eggs and larvae to be in dead bracken or leaf litter - so what we need is a mosaic of flower rich sunny glades in the wood - sounds easy! This is the pile of scrub and wood that I cleared - actually quite a lot for 2 hours work - there were about 15 of us there so we cleared a good area. It was good to get some experience with the tools and also get outside while the weather was good and do something useful. There are quite a few of our wildlife that need very specific habitats to live on - conservation is partly about identifying areas that are suitable and then ensuring they are managed appropriately.

I made some films in the university grounds trying to work out what I should do for the video that I am making - learnt a few things! More work on that over this weekend.