Butterfly season open

I walked my first butterfly transect of the year at the nature reserve. This lovely fresh comma greeted me on a fence post near the start. The transect is a fixed route which is walked once a week between 1st April and the end of September. Butterflies are recorded using a standardised methodology and the data is fed into a national scheme, giving a very good indication of long-term trends for different species. We walk three separate transects each week at the reserve. The one I do is seldom the richest for butterflies, but there are usually plenty of other things to see - today there was a fox, muntjac, roe deer, kestrel and ashy mining bee (Andrena ceneraria). See extras.