I am going to start off firstly by apologising for this huge blog today, my intentions were to cut this into a series throughout last month, but intentions and lockdown have not been very good at mixing. Since our last post we have been continuing our work towards our John Muir award, without it we would have had a lot less to keep Jared occupied with. So I’m very grateful for the opportunity indeed.
In June, we successfully reared small tortoiseshell caterpillars - we were lucky enough to get a couple days break in that horrid rain to release our colourful beauties- so I will be sharing a blog post about those guys soon.
We were both lucky enough to witness a couple of the caterpillars pupating, and amazingly witnessed one of the butterflies emerge! I’m hoping to work out how to share a video or two with you guys! Also if anyone remembers Fred & Shaggy our orange-tips: they are still happily hanging out.
The kids and I have been back on the butterfly transect around Castlemilk Park for a few weeks now - it’s been fab to officially record again and ( in my opinion) to walk round a park looking its wildest and best for biodiversity. Just look at this picture from during the week - it looked magical in the sunshine.
There have been the usual butterfly suspects flying around, but much much more ringlets and meadow browns than the last couple years; and I have never seen so many different species of bees and flies!
We also spotted two lovely big moths that we’d not seen before - just chilling on nettles that would usually be mowed! I’ll be blogging what we’ve seen in the park lately, and share Jared’s exploration of a couple of Giant Sequoias along the way.
At home, I’ve been lucky enough to squeeze in a few zoom classes regarding everything butterfly and moth ID whilst juggling the kids ( literally on my knees). They were lovely to take part in as I wouldn’t have been able to join in otherwise and they were also perfectly suited to our John Muir Award. Thanks Butterfly Conservation!
So at the beginning of this month, I got the opportunity to share some of what Jared and I have learned through our activities & these classes. I created a butterfly quiz for Castlemilk Park’s Young Explorer group! I’m delighted to report it went down well with the kids, and was very excited to hear the Scottish Wildlife Trust leaders did it as well and thought it was fab! Feel free to have a look & quiz any interested youngsters you know!
Again, this award has been such a good thing to do during the lockdown, and as restrictions ease Jared and I are looking forward to seeing what conservation efforts we can do on site. Lately, I’ve been taking part in castlemilk parks very own zoom sessions, these have been great in allowing me to explore the history and biota of the park for our award remotely . The link to Castlemilk Park’s facebook is always below , so do check it out - any future presentations are really worth joining.
At home, the patch we pledged to pollinators earlier this year is also looking amazing, I didn’t think we would transform our whole veranda either; but we did! Jared has his own garden space that he is continually collecting bits and bobs for - these join his painted pebbles and homemade stickman .
Everything growing is edible and have been enjoyed by us already, more importantly the hoverflies and bees have been visiting - so it’s certainly serving it’s purpose. The shared square out the back has not been cut at all this year , and even with hay fever sufferers in the house we are enjoying seeing several ringlets which we otherwise wouldn’t have .
We have really been appreciating the long grass - Jared has been out with the net, hunting for anything he can find (which is a great activity for kids, even in short grass).
I have also been encouraging him to take my phone to take pictures of things he finds interesting - I will finish our June update with his very first bee picture.
I hope you enjoyed the read and I will hopefully have the above blogs posted up soon - I really really want to share our butterfly’s emergence with you all.
Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to read these posts, and please feel free to get in touch with any queries in regards to any of our activities or the park/butterflies in general!
Hi Emma what an amazing blog you have done and so interesting the pictures both you and Jared have taken are gorgeous what a wonderful time the boys must be having and your veranda is looking amazing and all the fresh herbs etc will be so tasty too well done Sweetheart you are an amazing mum to the boys and they are so clever Jared can be so informative about it all to especially since he still only 3years old well done and look forward to seeing more the butterflies 🦋 are gorgeous too xx