Never give up!

[PhilM]

Hi folks,

I've been reading posts on this forum for a few months now and have decided to join to see if I can contribute a little. First, I thought I'd say Hi and tell you a little about myself and where I am with my own personal lepidopteran adventure.

My name is Phil and I've been interested in butterflies and moths since I was a kid. At age ten I can remember setting up my own butterfly den in the garden shed, even pinning a cardboard and pen sign on the door which read Butterflies Of The World. As I grew older other things seem to get in the way - finding a mate, working various jobs and generally being too busy to do the thing I really wanted to do - study lepidopterology. Recently I find I know have the time but not the capability to get out there where the butterflies are and study their beauty, behaviour and ecology. I've got spinal stenosis which is quite limiting at the moment, the maximum I can walk is a mile on a good day, at little more than larval pace, and its not really safe for me to drive. But it has given me time to think about what I want to do with my ne lifestyle and this is what I've come up with:

I'm going to study lepidopterology, mostly from a scientific point of view rather than ID alone. I don't want to take a full time university course on the subject as I'd have to take biology, then zoology, then entomology, then lepidopterology - I worked it out - I'd be 82 years old when I finished! Plus some days I'm just not up to studying on a formal, time critic basis. So instead, I'm learning at my own pace and doing my own research with the aid of books and the internet (one recent addition is Peter Eeles' book and it is excellent, I've given it five stars on Amazon). It's a bit of a haphazard way of doing things but it suits my lifestyle and I'm enjoying it. It's amazing what is out there for free and I'm constantly amazed by the wonders of lepidopterans in general - global species and both rhopalocera and heterocera.

Forums like this have been a great help and I would like to thank all the administrators for providing such resources. Follow the links, look up words you don't understand and it is wonderful where they take you. So much so that I have recently started a lepidopterology forum of my own, I won't post the url here, that would be too cheeky, although it is not really like this site. I'm trying to build mine to be more about the scientific study of butterflies and moths and it covers species from all over the globe. And its teaching me a bit about running a forum, from keeping out the spammers to getting new members. I want to use it to help me with my studies and to make some new like minded friends from across the globe. Early days yet but fun.

With winter coming on many enthusiasts will no doubt suffer from Lepidopteran Withdrawal Symptom (LWS - let's make it official! ). But know is the time to explore books and the internet so we all can become more knowledgeable and fascinated at the same time. I'll certainly be posting links to some interesting texts that might be of interest here on British and Irish lepidopterans.

[Padfield]

You are very welcome, Phil. I for one have no problem at all with you linking to your own forum in these pages, and indeed, if interesting things are going to go on there, we'd like to share the buzz! To respect your modesty, I won't publish the URL here, but suffice to say it took me a few seconds to find it (mainly because 'lepidopterology' is quite a rare word! ).

I sympathise greatly with you. I was reflecting just this summer, as I climbed hills in Spain, that the day would inevitably come when I couldn't do this any more, and that accident or illness could bring that day forward to tomorrow on a whim of fate. I imagined what I would do to compensate, and like you came up with all sorts of ideas for study, rearing, teaching and so forth. Once bitten, forever smitten, come hell, high water or spinal stenosis! From the way you write, I know you will find fulfilment in your continuing relationship with butterflies and moths.

I do hope you will share your discoveries in these pages as well as in your own forum.

Guy

[PhilM]

Thank you Padfield for your well wishes. I am going to start to post interesting links that I find on the internet onto UKB forums, especially if they are relevant to British and Irish species. I'm amazed you found my little venture so quickly! Lepidopterology is quite rarely used at enthusiast level, but we are all lepidopterists really, indeed some of the greatest contributions to the science have been made by so-called amateurs, especially historically. Take James Joicey or Margaret Fountaine for example, I doubt if we would be as far forward as we are now without their considerable contributions. But we also need to be grateful to professional and academic lepidopterists who have studied for many years to achieve their doctorates and have the technical knowledge and equipment to advance the science. I find scientific papers fascinating, once I have gotten used to the language they inevitably have to use.

Thank you for your welcome. I would like to link to my forum via a signature, but won't do so unless given the go ahead, perhaps by Peter, just in case he thinks there is any conflict of interest.

Kind wishes,
Phil.

[David M]

Welcome, Phil, and I look forward to any contributions you can make.

Sadly, for many of us, those hardcore interests of our childhood fade away in our teenage years for the very reasons you've stated, only to resurface when we have insufficient years left to do proper justice to them.

That doesn't mean we should neglect these interests; far from it, we should do whatever we can to maximise them. Hindsight is, unfortunately, a realisation of what's gone and no amount of wishful thinking can buy back those years where we could have better employed our free time to do those things that we only understood were so precious when it was too late to devote the prime period of our lives to them.

Now that we DO understand, I believe it's even more important to follow these passions, irrespective of any influences we can't realistically control.

I wish you luck in your endeavours.

[PhilM]

Thank you for the welcome David and for the motivation! It's strange how life goes isn't it. But I'm really happy with my endeavours now, hopefully they will take me close to where I've always wanted to be.

I've posted my first 'proper' post in the links section. An interesting paper on how butterflies keep cool. Most of the research was done in Britain and involves British species, so I hope you find it interesting.

Thanks for responding, I hope to chat with you on the forums as time goes by.

Cheers,
Phil.