Large White

It's so easy to overlook the familiar and commonplace, but a freshly emerged Large White butterfly is stunning, seen here feeding on Marjoram - a superb nectar source for so many invertebrates and very abundant at Swaddywell NR, where I spent the morning training the regular volunteers how to monitor the grassland.


Most of them seemed to really enjoy learning the technique, which was originally developed by JNCC for monitoring SSSIs. By the end of the session even those who'd never really done a lot of plant identification were recognising the suite of indicator species. Luckily the rain largely held off - I think it all fell on Peterborough!