SUMMER NEWS BULLETIN A warm welcome to all new and existing members of East Scotland Butterfly Conservation. We hope you find this quarterly news bulletin a useful round-up of interesting articles, key dates for your diary and important contacts. The East Branch committee wishes you an enjoyable summer and many sightings of this season's butterflies and moths! Upcoming events Saturday 2nd October: Butterfly Conservation Scotland’s online Autumn Gathering 2021 - This half-day event will take place as a Free Zoom Webinar between 10am until 1pm, and we have an exciting programme of talks and presentations from our butterfly and moth experts and our wonderful volunteers. Check out the BC events page for all events in Scotland: https://butterfly-conservation.org/events/scotland Aberdeenshire News Despite the slow start to spring and unpromising forecasts, the weather was just about warm enough for some good moth and butterfly sightings on some events we ran in May. I led an informal session on Kentish Glory moths for some Cairngorms National Park Authority Rangers and NatureScot Muir of Dinnet NNR staff and we were privileged to find and watch two recently emerged females drying their wings then attracting males. Then on our Kentish Glory field workshop at Muir of Dinnet to follow up BC Scotland online workshops on this nationally rare moth, everyone was able to see both adult moths and eggs (some likely laid by the females seen the week before!) to inspire them to search for the species in other locations as part of the Rare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms project. Sunshine also brought the bonus of seeing other day-flying species including Netted Mountain Moth, only found on bearberry heathland and Emperor Moth. A couple of weeks later I led a guided walk at Cambus O'May for the Cairngorms Nature Big Weekend, to hopefully see Pearl-bordered Fritillaries, and participants were rewarded with close-up views of several freshly minted specimens, as well as a few Orange-tips and Speckled Woods. It was also lovely to see old and new faces on these events after most of us had not met with many people for some time! We are planning a few in person public moth events this summer, covid-19 restrictions permitting (booking essential as places limited): Friday 9th July - Moth Morning, Burn O' Vat, Muir of Dinnet NNR 10.30am-12noon (with Aberdeenshire Council Ranger Service & NatureScot for Moth Night 2021) Friday 30th July - Moth & Bat Night, Finzean 8.45pm - late (with Aberdeenshire Council Ranger Service & Birse Community Trust) Saturday 7th August – Moth & Bat Night, Westfield Park, Bridge of Don, Aberdeen - 8.30pm - late (with Aberdeen City Council & Aberdeenshire Council Ranger Services & Friends of Westfield Park) For details and possible further events please check https://butterfly-conservation.org/events - search by East Scotland branch to see what's happening locally. You can find BC Scotland online workshops there too. Some events are in partnership with Aberdeenshire Council Ranger Service who I work for and bookings can be made via their Eventbrite page – you can follow this for event updates: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/aberdeenshire-council-ranger-service-18556211547 There have been a number of sightings in the area of one of this year’s survey target species, Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth, from upper Deeside to Balmedie on the coast, which is encouraging. The first one of the season was a chance encounter at Dinnet by a family with sharp eyes and a camera - in late April, surprisingly early especially given the mostly cold conditions up to then, but a few fine days on a site that gets the sun must have enabled emergence. Further sightings at the same location over subsequent weeks – including one nectaring on primroses photographed by local recorder Mary Laing - and the presence of the caterpillar foodplant, devil’s-bit scabious indicate this is probably a breeding site, which will be the first to be found in the area as most previous sightings have been of moths visiting gardens. We will be looking for larvae in summer to hopefully confirm this and would like to find other sites too. There are still opportunities to get involved with such moth and butterfly surveys around Aberdeenshire this summer – see our Spring 2021 Newsletter for details. --- Written by Helen Rowe, BC East Scotland Branch Aberdeen area organiser & South Aberdeenshire county moth recorder Fife and Clackmannanshire News There have already been several sightings of Wall butterflies with Tentsmuir Point and Crail the favoured locations! This species first appeared in east Fife last summer and we are very excited to be receiving records already this summer. Grayling If you are interested in volunteering to help with either practical conservation work and/or Grayling monitoring at Tentsmuir, Kinshaldy or Earlshall Muir please do get in touch. Purple Hairstreak Chris Stamp will be running a Purple Hairstreak training evening the week of 19th July at a site in west Fife. The training will prepare volunteers to carry out their own surveys for this elusive species. Chris has drawn up a list of potential locations focusing on mature oak trees which volunteers will be asked to survey on sunny afternoons in August. The Northern Brown Argus (NBA) This stunning wee butterfly is found at just a few select locations in Fife and Clacks where Common Rock-rose grows. Hamish Johnston monitors the transect each year at Kincraig and is leading the project to survey for NBA at all locations in Fife where Common Rock-rose occurs. If you are interested in any of these opportunities, please get in touch by email at [email protected] for more details. --- Written by Elspeth Christie My Bike for Butterflies I’ve always been fascinated by the Land’s End to John o’Groats long distance bike ride, but never found a good reason to do it. Or perhaps I’ve not been brave (or stupid) enough to try? Then, in 2019, I had a brainwave: why not do a sponsored bike ride to raise money for BC? I could visit lots of reserves on the way and promote the great work done by many organisations and armies of volunteers. I could highlight the plight of nature as we face a biodiversity and climate crisis while I visit wonderful wildlife sites across the country. Colleagues at Head Office were supportive, and my “Bike For Butterflies” started to take shape. Covid meant that we had to delay plans for 2020, but I am now back on track. With the extra time, I decided to invest in a new bike, which is called Ollie, after the Oleander Hawk Moth that graced my trap in Swanage in September 2018. I set off from Land’s End on 22nd June. The 1,200-mile Bike for Butterflies will take 30 days, finishing at John o’Groats on 21st July. The route is based on the National Cycle Network developed by Sustrans, with detours so that I can stop off at butterfly sites on most days. If I’m lucky, I could see as many as 48 of Britain’s 59 species of butterfly. To do so, I need to visit as many different habitats as possible. I’ll be spending time at eight of Butterfly Conservation’s own reserves, each an example of precious habitat and the wildlife it supports. These include Haddon Moor, a fine example of Culm grassland on Exmoor; Stoke Camp and Westbury Beacon in the Mendip Hills; Rough Bank near Stroud; Monkwood, an ancient coppice woodland; Prees Heath Common in Shropshire for the Silver-studded Blue; and Myers Allotment, a quintessential Morecambe Bay landscape. My last Butterfly Conservation reserve of the trip will be Wester Moss near Stirling - a lowland raised bog, now a very rare habitat in Scotland. I’m due to be there on Tues 13th July and I hope to see the Large Heath. I’ll be looking out for Purple Hairstreaks in Scotland, and trying to hunt down a colony in Killin when I’m there on the evening of 14th July. I may even make it to Ben Lawers, north of Loch Tay, for the Mountain Ringlet. The route and other details are on the website www.bikeforbutterflies.org and you can follow my progress on Twitter @sbsaville. Do join me en route if you can. The link for donation is www.justgiving.com/fundraising/bikeforbutterflies. Please share and publicise the ride as widely as possible. I hope that this Bike For Butterflies will raise awareness of the biodiversity and climate crisis and what Butterfly Conservation - and others - are doing to meet the challenge. We need to act: nature needs our help - and never more than now. I also hope that the Bike For Butterflies will become an established route for the Land’s End to John o’Groats ride, one that others choose to follow in years to come. It’s certain to be quite an adventure. I just hope my knees hold out! --- Written by Simon Saville, a trustee of Butterfly Conservation and Chair of the Surrey & SW London Branch. He lives in London and is a proud promoter of the Big City Butterflies project. Rearing Purple Hairstreaks This seasons newsletter features rare pictures of a female Purple Hairstreak, hatched from an egg and reared through the caterpillar and pupal stages this spring. Chris Stamp collected eggs from windfall oak twigs over the winter in south Perthshire and successfully reared six butterflies. The tiny caterpillars inside the eggs would not have survived having been blown off their food source, so these were effectively rescued and then given VIP treatment before the adult butterflies emerged to be photographed and released.