Wildlife April 2010

[Maggi Young]

We have had quite a few this year already.... Ian spent quite a while yesterday chasing a pair round the garden in an attempt to photograph them... they were very flighty!

[Stephenb]

Peacocks are a real Scottish success story. Less than twenty years ago I would have had to go to the coast to see one, and even there they were rare. Now they are the commonest late summer butterfly in my garden.

Do you know the reason for the increase? I saw them also here for the first time about 5 years ago and they now turn up most years. There's a large geographical gap in the distribution though between our area and the far south of Norway, see the map showing all observations in our web reporting scheme:

[Anthony Darby]

Climate change, pure and simple. George Thomson in "The Butterflies of Scotland (1980) writes "resident in west Scotland, probable migrant to east Scotland and uncommon visitor to north and north-east Scotland." He goes on to report ".. accounts in entomological and zoological journals show that the Peacock butterfly must have been well established in the south of Scotland in the nineteenth century". It seems to have decreased during the early part of the twentieth century "at the beginning of this [20^th] century it was becoming rare in Roxburghshire and scarce in Berwickshire. It did not completely disappear from Galloway". Its food plant (nettle) is not the issue, so it must be a change in climate. This has also seen the spread of the Orange Tip (Anthocaris cardamines), now common in Dunblane but in 1980 I had to drive to Kingussie in June to see it. In more recent times the Comma (Polygonia c-album) has been seen in Dunblane. In the 1920s this butterfly's distribution in the UK had retracted to a very small area around Hereford!

[mark smyth]

Anthony I hope you were watching Museum of Life tonight. Lots of butterflies

[Anthony Darby]

Anthony I hope you were watching Museum of Life tonight. Lots of butterflies

No. What channel?

[mark smyth]

I sent you a text when I saw what would be on. It will probably be repeated or you can catch it on iplayer

[Panu]

This time of year again
Crappy pics, sorry.

[Maggi Young]

Tough to find a sunny spot to warm up and feel full of the joys of spring when all that snow is still around.... hard life  being a snake!

[Anthony Darby]

Cool snake!

Weather's been warm enough to switch the waterfall on. Here a coal tit takes a bath in the water that bubbles out of the top of the boulder.

[mark smyth]

Is that frog spawn on the rocks?

[Anthony Darby]

Moss that grows on anything in my garden that doesn't move. A curious question Mark.

[fredg]

It's still around, the Jackdaws were too busy playing with the neighbourhood Crows to bother with it.

[mark smyth]

It looks like jelly, Anthony. Did you watch Museum of Life? It's a brilliant series about behind the scenes of the Natural History Museum

[Anthony Darby]

It looks like jelly, Anthony. Did you watch Museum of Life? It's a brilliant series about behind the scenes of the Natural History Museum

Jelly? That will be because there's water tumbling over it. It's bone dry except when it rains or I have the water fall turned on.

Not had a chance yet.

[Lesley Cox]

Is that frog spawn on the rocks?

No, it's a dessert called Lemon Sago. Someone spat it out.