Saving England's most threatened species from extinction
Archive:
12th November 2019
Woodland Birds Creative Writing Even if you've never been to Northamptonshire, there is a good chance you've heard of Rockingham Forest. This was once a hunting forest covering over a third of the county; it now exists in isolated patches dotted through a farmed landscape, giving people like me the opportunity to walk in nature...
Read more9th October 2019
Chequered Skipper caterpillar find! Over the last couple of years, I have been involved with the volunteer monitoring of the Chequered Skipper release in Rockingham Forest, firstly with the adult butterflies brought in from Belgium , and then with the butterflies that had emerged from those first adults. Later in the first year we had...
Read more17th September 2019
Following the successful reintroduction of the Chequered Skipper to the Rockingham Forest, the Back from the Brink Roots of Rockingham team are on a mission to spread the word! As community engagement officer, one of my tasks is to take the news about our project into schools and get young people interested in what’s going...
Read moreOne of my favourite things to do is walk in the woods. Another is to write, and a third is to make zines. This project let me do all three, with some brilliant young people and families! We created a zine called Fans of the Forest, celebrating Fineshade Woods and the plants and animals...
Read more29th August 2019
Spotty Chequered Skippers! Following the announcement of our news about the initial Chequered Skipper success (very exciting!), people have been curious as to why red spots can be seen on the wings of some of the butterflies. Hopefully this blog post will reveal all. This year we bought a second batch of Chequered Skipper’s over...
Read more25th July 2019
The Chequered Skipper Flies Again! Seeing Chequered Skippers flying once again in their former English strongholds has been a dream of mine since I was a child. I grew up in Northamptonshire in a house that backed on to fields and while exploring the seemingly endless natural world beyond the back gate I developed a...
Read more28th June 2019
A previously extinct butterfly has bred successfully in an English woodland for the first time in more than 40 years as part of the ambitious conservation project, Back from the Brink. Freshly emerged Chequered Skippers have been regularly spotted over the last few weeks at a secret location in Rockingham Forest, Northamptonshire, and it is...
Read more8th August 2018
It’s been almost three months since the Chequered Skipper butterfly took to the wing in England for the first time in 40 years. We were lucky to get lots of media coverage of the release which was a great opportunity to tell people more about the work we are doing, as well as allowing people...
Read more18th June 2018
My name is Jamie Wildman and I am a PhD Environmental Science student at the University of Northampton which is working in partnership with Butterfly Conservation to research the ecology of the Chequered Skipper butterfly and its reintroduction to Rockingham Forest as part of the Back from the Brink Roots of Rockingham project. Belgium: Collecting...
Read more15th May 2018
Can I write a short blog on my childhood memories of the Chequered Skipper? No problem said I! Big problem thinking about it, it was 50 years ago and I was only ten! In 1969, a friend had talked me into going on a nature based holiday with the local Natural History club. We were...
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