On seeing the first butterflies of Spring…
Perhaps it would be better to say that I saw the first butterflies I had noticed this Spring. The unassuming Small Tortoiseshell was the butterfly in question, and like the…
Category: butterfly
Extinct in Ireland, September 27th – Small mountain ringlet (Erebia epiphron)
From the Straffan Butterfly Farm page: The small mountain ringlet: A famous butterfly collector called Mr Edwin Birchall claimed to have collected a series of these butterflies halfway up Croagh…
Extinct in Ireland, September 26th, Large copper (Lycaena Dispar)
The first butterfly to feature on the melancholy month of Irish extinctions is the Large Copper Another permanent Irish extinction is the Straffan Butterfly Farm which is now permanently closed.…
All-Ireland Pollinator Plan: call on Faith Communities to help pollinators
As this page points out, faith communities tend to own and manage considerable land (also quite spread out round the country). It is good to see this kind of outreach…
What Does it Take? – from “Dispatches from the Undergrowth” blog, on saving a species
Originally posted on dispatches from the undergrowth:
Conservationists constantly worry about how to ‘keep things going’ – be it a bird, butterfly, or some other organism teetering on the brink.…
Review of “Life Ascending”, Nick Lane, Eurotimes July 2009
This fine book on evolution was well reviewed at the time and won the 2010 Royal Society prize for science books. Here is my review from Eurotimes . Or rather…
A butterfly in the woods: guerrilla forest art in Millennium Forest Kilkenny
Walking in the Millennium Forest in Kilkenny I saw in the distance what seemed like an unbelievably considerate butterfly lying still on a tree trunk: As I approached, it was suspiciously still…
Matthews Oates on butterfly watching, from “In Pursuit of Butterflies”
Butterflying, and Emperoring in particular, does not entail hours of walking, but eternities of standing about, watching and waiting. Patience is everything, and those of us who have spent our…
Séamus Sweeney 