First Large Skipper for Renfrewshire

At the last PNHS talk one of our members, Dee Murray, mentioned the unusual butterfly she spotted in her garden during the summer. Dee is interested in butterflies and records them along a local transect, but this was one she hadn’t seen before. She saw it on 29th July when finishing up a cup of tea in the garden. “My husband and I got up to go back inside the house. We noticed a ‘bug’ on one of our sedum plants. With mobile phone in hand, a series of gradually-getting-closer photos was taken. On checking these on a larger screen a short time later it appeared that we may have captured an image of a Skipper Butterfly, but couldn’t really tell which.”

Dee posted it on the UK Butterflies group on Facebook and someone came back suggesting Large Skipper. She added the record to the iRecord Butterflies app. Just over a week later she was at a Butterfly Conservation Scotland event at Elder Park in Govan and mentioned it to the event organiser, Anthony McCluskey. After sending him the photographs he got back to her confirming it was a Large Skipper and saying “As far as I can tell, the nearest record of Large Skipper to you is near Irvine … Congratulations on your spot of a Large Skipper butterfly, a first record for Renfrewshire”.

Well done Dee and thanks for sharing with us!

If anyone else has an interesting sighting they would like to share then please email it to us.