The UK Butterflies Team

Peter Eeles

I've always been interested in nature, and butterflies in particular - fostered by a childhood spent in rural Gloucestershire. Long summer days were spent roaming the Cotswold Hills in the area around Cheltenham and I remember with great fondness my encounters with Duke of Burgundy, Chalkhill Blue, Marsh Fritillary, Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Dark Green Fritillary, Small Blue, Grayling, Green Hairstreak, Dingy Skipper and a host of other species - all within 10 minutes walk from my home. Not too far away I could also find Adonis Blue, Silver-washed Fritillary and White-letter Hairstreak. Those sites, unfortunately, are mostly long gone. My interest was put on the back-burner as I focused on studies at university and, later, my family. This interest was then re-awoken in 2001 when a work colleague showed me his web photo album full of amazing butterfly images. Within a week I'd bought my first digital camera and I was hooked, again.

In 2002 I created the UK Butterflies website in order to simply show my album of photos on the web. This has led to passion for fostering an interest in our ever-declining fauna and flora. In 2004 I set out on a mission to photograph all of the butterfly species (and all stages) in the British Isles and soon realised that a lot of the information I was after was difficult to find - especially reliable information on good sites to visit. As I toured the country I'd share information with other enthusiasts and this seemed to be the only way of getting the information I needed. I marked up a road atlas with sites, and the species found there. As the atlas fell to pieces with constant use, I quickly realised that the best solution was to store this information in a database. What's more, I also felt that the information would be useful to other enthusiasts, and made much of this information available over the web (although information on fragile sites, or sites with endangered species, were omitted, responsibility being one of the themes under which the website is run). The rest, as they say, is history. The UK Butterflies website now includes detailed information on sites, species, flight times and much much more.

More recently, the website has also grown into a community project with forums, photo galleries and blogs where members can connect with one another. In 2007 UK Butterflies really came to life by not only providing monthly and annual photo competitions that are run over the web, but by physically getting the membership together through an annual photography workshop and by attending the major entomological fairs and relevant butterfly conservation events around the country. All profits from these events go to the Butterfly Conservation charity with which the website is associated.

I also support conservation activities in whatever way I can. I became a member of Butterfly Conservation in 2002, and took over the running of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight branch website in 2004. I handed off this responsibility in 2007 to Robin Turner and now act as branch Vice-Chairman. I've also helped, and am helping, Butterfly Conservation with some of their national IT-related projects. I can be contacted at pete@ukbutterflies.co.uk.

Guy Padfield

I now live in the Swiss Alps, but my passion for butterflies began in Suffolk, in the UK, which was, in times past, a rich hunting ground for butterfly collectors. Times have changed. In my lifetime the heathlands and hedgerows of Suffolk have been steadily reclaimed and the countryside described by the writers of old has become more and more inhospitable to butterflies. There are some success stories - the white admiral has returned, and the brown argus and speckled wood have moved east again from their strongholds in the west of the county. Suffolk is still a beautiful county but all in all the story has been a sad one, and one repeated all over the country.

Many individuals and bodies fight for the preservation of habitats in Suffolk and everywhere there are still habitats to preserve. But there is only real hope if the value of what remains is generally recognised - if ordinary people gain pleasure from taking time in the wild and resisting the temptation to let it be replaced with the tame. It is not enough realised how almost every act of taming threatens the species which have evolved to survive in an interlocking web of copses, hedgerows, heathlands and wetlands. Every road that increases our access to the countryside divides and conquers the land it crosses. Every prairie farm is tippex on the ecological map. Every bit of crafted landscaping has a sinister, hollow ring beside the wilderness it replaces.

Finding, identifying and watching butterflies is an enthralling hobby. Anyone can become an expert on their own patch in a summer. If you haven't done so already, buy a book and get out there! When you find what is there, protect it, so generations to come will be able to gain the same pleasure.

I'm generally known on the UK Butterflies website for assisting with identification of European butterflies species in the various forums. In addition to supporting the UK Butterflies website, I also run my own website at www.guypadfield.com. I can be contacted at guy@ukbutterflies.co.uk.

Gary Richardson

I live in small village in west Hampshire, where my family has lived for at least two centuries and, like many of my ancestors, I am now a Parish Councillor. I have had many interests over the years, from keeping tropical fish (an obsession that eventually lead to owning a shop with over 80 tanks), to a ten year cycle racing career, from which I was forced to retire in 2001 due to a full trophy cabinet!!! I still keep fish in the way of a 5000 gallon Koi pond but, despite continuing requests from old team mates, I rarely get on a bike now. I spend my free time now doing quite a bit of falconry and a lot of photography - always accompanied by my wife/best mate and none-too-shabby photographer, Lisa.

I use a Canon 40D and own various Canon EF and Sigma EX lenses. I mostly do Macro work using a Sigma F/2.8 Macro lens. My interest with Butterflies, not surprisingly, started with photography but lead to a deep and passionate interest. For 26 weeks of the year I do a transect walk at my local site, and from April till September, whatever the weather, I go out to do some Butterfly photography.

I generally co-ordinate all photography-related aspects of the UK Butterflies web site, including the monthly photo competitions that are run in the photography forum. I can be contacted at gary@ukbutterflies.co.uk.

Piers Vigus

My interest in natural history, and in particular invertebrates, began almost as soon as I was expelled from the womb. I was fortunate enough to spend my pre-school years in rural Somerset some distance from villages or towns; and my days were spent in farm yards and fields scratching around in the ditches and hedgerows or in ponds and streams with water pouring in over the tops of my little red wellies.

Some of my very earliest memories are of exploring my parent's land, and being fascinated, intrigued, and amazed by the weird and wonderful world of invertebrates around me. An interest that my unsuspecting parents were forced to adopt as the house began to fill with all manner of creepy crawlies in jars and boxes; along with an eclectic mix of natural curios from rocks and minerals to skulls, feathers, leaves, old bird's nests, fungi, lichens, and just about anything that I could pick up and take home.

Clearly I remember as a small child acquiring a copy of Britain's Butterflies from the Brooke Bond Tea card series, and becoming obsessed with the monochrome illustrations of 'variations' as they were called. Why were these butterflies so different than the ones I saw in the garden and surrounding countryside? What made them so special and so different? Thus began an intense fascination with Lepidoptera, and particularly the variation in British butterflies. A worthy substitute for the social skills that I lacked resulting from an isolated childhood.

This enduring curiosity continued through my formative years and into my awkward teens, when I assisted during school holidays as a volunteer at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery in cataloguing their British Moth collections. It was here that I first encountered specimens of rare and wonderful butterflies and particularly aberrations that until then I could only have dreamed of seeing; in the impressive collections that were amassed by fascinating and mysterious gentlemen with eccentric facial hair many decades before I was born.

Over the intervening years I have contrived to amass and absorb as much information as I am able around this subject, which lead in my twenties to countless breeding experiments attempting to fathom the hereditary factors and environmentally controlled aspects of many butterfly aberrations; as well as countless attempts to grow whiskers as impressive as my hirsute spiritual forebears.

In addition to my interest in entomology and natural history, I am a keen collector of natural history books, and my collection now contains well over a thousand titles, including many rare and valuable volumes both antiquarian and modern. Variety is, as Cowper said, the very spice of life, and when not nose to nose with an insect I am also a vintage agricultural machinery enthusiast, a keen shot, and an obsessive devotee of Wagner, to the exclusion of almost all other forms of music. "Through Art all men are saved"

I am a member of Butterfly Conservation, the AES, the BENHS, and a small group devoted to the study of trees. Having experienced life in various towns and cities I am now fortunate enough to live in relative isolation from society, on the edge of a small woodland adjacent to the South Wiltshire Downs, with my incredibly long suffering partner, and ever enthusiastic assistant, Elizabeth. I can be contacted at piers@ukbutterflies.co.uk.