Join The Great Butterfly Count
Want to learn more about butterflies? Want to join the UK’s leading airport parking company in helping discover the wildlife stars in your back garden? Then get out for the Big Butterfly Count between 15th July and 7th August.
Sarah Anglim, managing director of I Love meet and greet, explains, “We know that counts from towns and cities are as especially useful as there is evidence that butterflies are doing better in urban areas compared to the countryside, so we are using our drivers at Gatwick and Stansted airports to record the butterflies they see.”
This is the seventh year of the Big Butterfly Count which aims to gather information on the health of our butterfly populations around the UK. You can do the Count anywhere and it’s really simple. Just choose a sunny day, spend 15 minutes counting the butterflies you see, and send your records in online. Butterflies are extremely sensitive indicators of the health of the environment, so by counting their numbers each year we can assess the long term health of the environment. Getting started is easy.
Download an ID chart from the Big Butterfly Count website and get familiar with the 21 widespread species you might see. Then, when the Count starts, begin counting. You can submit records from lots of different places, the more the merrier, to help us make a full assessment of the UK. Alternatively, you can download the Big Butterfly Count smartphone app (available for iOS and Android devices), making it even easier to identify species and submit sightings when you are out and about. The results are then uploaded directly to the Big Butterfly Count website. Full details and a downloadable ID chart can be found at www.bigbutterflycount.org