To contact Highland Branch on any matter relating to butterflies and moths in the Branch area, please email contact@highland-butterflies.org.uk. Enquiries relating to identification are welcome, and if you can attach a photo, so much the better. Contributions for the Latest news page can also be submitted in this way.

You can also contact the Branch using the feedback form on the Contact us page.

To submit records of butterflies and moths from the Branch area, including the Hebrides and Northern Isles, please send them to the appropriate Butterfly Recorder or County Moth Recorder, whose contact details can be found on the Your records page.

A pdf version of our 2019 newsletter has been uploaded to the newsletter section of the website here.

Although not available in paper format, this report has UK distribution maps for all resident and regular migrant species apart from Large Blue based on the most recent five-year survey of the Butterflies for the New Millenium recording scheme.  Maps show distribution in each 10km by 10km grid square for 2010-2014, as well as historical records.  The report can be seen here.

Certain areas remain under-recorded, particularly Skye and the Small Isles, parts of Wester Ross and Central Sutherland.  Anyone getting a chance to visit and record in these areas in the next two seasons could make a welcome contribution to filling in these gaps.

2017 WCBS Results

The WCBS is a UK-wide project looking at changes in the populations of the commoner butterfly species. Before the WCBS was set up, systematic butterfly-monitoring was often restricted to nature reserves or other good butterfly areas. While this was very useful for monitoring the rarer species found at these sites, the results of such monitoring did not produce results representative of the countryside as a whole. The WCBS was devised with the intent to rectify this discrepancy, which it does by choosing survey sites at random.

Hundreds of one-kilometre squares have been randomly chosen across the country, each one waiting to be surveyed just twice a year by willing volunteers. Here in Highland Branch (i.e. Highland, Moray, Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides) we have 80 of these squares... and many have not yet been surveyed at all! Who knows what unusual butterflies might be hiding in these unexplored sites? Could you be the intrepid surveyor willing to go where no butterfly recorder has gone before? Or are you a seasoned WCBS-er wanting to continue with your existing site (or even to try a different one!)? Whichever description suits you best, please get in touch and I will furnish you with more information about the project and give you the locations of squares near you!  There is also more information on our "Surveys" page here.

Kirstie Ross is the new Highland Branch WCBS Champion
funkyhaywood@yahoo.co.uk

The Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) runs from the beginning of March to early November, with people recording the numbers of around 300 species of the more common moths in their gardens once a week throughout this period.  To download a copy of the reports including Highland data, please click here.