Butterflies, bees and ID apps

Easter Craiglockhart Hill is very close to Watsons, and is the ideal location to explore our local wildlife with students. I’ve arranged a meetup this coming Wednesday with Jim Heath, chair of FECH, to explore the hill and look at options for how students could get out of the classroom and learn about the biodiversity of the hill.

I’ve already mentioned the bird ID app Merlin on my previous post while in the Netherlands, which I’m starting to use every day on walks here in Edinburgh. Jim has been surveying bees on Easter Craiglockhart Hill for over two years, and has recently begun the same process with butterflies. It turns out identifying bees is a much harder task than birds, simply because there are so many variables which can all be important in identifying the right species – see here for a good guide to photographing bees for the purpose of identifying them. Thankfully there is also an app that can help.

Beewalk has great potential as an activity for science students interested in conserving natural habitats. Observations could feed into a national database of bees, allowing for investigations into population changes in response to land use and climate change, amongst other things.

Butterflies can also be recorded with an app. As stated on the Butterfly Conservation charity website,

The sightings, whether from nature reserve, countryside, park or garden, submitted through our recording and monitoring schemes underpin our work to save threatened species, improve landscapes, increase knowledge and raise awareness.

I’ve a lot more to learn about the importance of bees and butterflies, but we’ve all got to start somewhere. One thing is for sure though, enjoying the sound of the buzz of a bee and or the flutter of a butterfly is not exclusively a delight for kids! And fun fact I’ve learned so far – the genus to which all species of bumblebee belong is called Bombas – I love that!

Gallery

A selection of bees and butterflies we have photographed over the years – how about looking through your phone to see what you’ve observed over the years?