Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> I was just seven years old when my father gave me some Brooke Bond Tea card albums complete with tea cards. They included British Butterflies and Butterflies of the World both by Richard Ward and were issued in 1963-64. My father informed me that he had once collected butterflies during his National Service in the 1950s and had kept them in the loft in cardboard boxes. He showed them to me and they included Comma Green Hairstreak and Grayling. One warm summer’s day shortly afterwards he taught me how to catch butterflies in a makeshift net. I caught a male Small White and spread out its wings with pennies and a few weeks later it took pride of place on a thin bed of cotton wool in a slim cigar box. I was captivated and my lifelong interest in these Several years later our family moved to Cornwall and the glorious summer of 1976 introduced me to butterflies not seen in a suburban London garden. Silver-washed High Brown Dark Green and Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries Green Hairstreaks Brimstones Gatekeepers Ringlets and several other species abounded in the Cornish countryside. I decided to try to find all the Cornish species to photograph but despite all my efforts I could not locate any book or guide on butterflies in Cornwall. This was partly rectified later by the publication by Frost and Madge of The Butterflies of South-east Cornwall in 1991. Then followed in quick succession Cornwall’s Butterfly and Moth Heritage by Adrian Spalding in 1992 The Butterflies of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly by Roger Penhallurick in 1996 and Frank Smith’s magisterial survey The Moths and Butterflies of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in 1997. In the meantime a meeting of enthusiasts took place in December 1992 which resulted in the formation of the Cornwall branch of Butterfly Conservation under the chairmanship of Gary Pilkington which was launched the following June. An ultimate aim of the branch was to publish an atlas of Cornwall’s butterflies but as an interim measure Adrian Spalding and John Worth produced for us an annual report showing distribution maps for each species in addition we also produced a triannual newsletter The Butterfly Observer. The maps often looked quite sparse even for the commoner species equating more with the distribution of recorders. Big steps were taken in the 1990s to co-ordinate and increase the records of our resident and migrant butterflies and many areas of Cornwall have now been well-covered for each.