Large Heath Butterfly

This may be an image of a dull non descript butterfly that you will definitely not see on your Buddleia bush but its the end of the 1st year of a breeding and reintroduction project I am involved with to repopulate a lowland mossland site nr Heysham with these enigmatic and locally rare little inverts. It has been at least 100years since Large Heath were recorded on this site. In July last year a number of mated female were taken from another local site in Lancashire bred in special rearing cages at Chester Zoo, brought back to Lancashire as pupa and as they have been emerging released. Today we had the BBC Northwest Tonight film crew and reporter on site filming and the full report will be on tonight at 18:30 and then on the iplayer. Year 2 starts in few weeks with another capture and breeding cycle and those release so far will hopefully mate and breed on the Heysham site this year.

This has got to be one of the best projects I've been involved with. I am a lucky man.