From neil at aurinia.co.uk Thu Apr 22 10:46:58 2021 From: neil at aurinia.co.uk (Neil Jones) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 15:46:58 +0100 Subject: [Leps-l] Future of butterflies symposium. Message-ID: Hello everyone, Last year there was a scientific symposium organized in the Netherlands by De Vlinderstichting. ( Literally translated as The Butterfly Foundation but often known in English as Dutch Butterfly Conservation.) Unfortunately it was postposed due to the pandemic. It was to have taken place this year but of course things are still bad. Here in the UK foreign travel is generally banned with some special exceptions. It was decided this year to hold a partial symposium over Zoom and the talks given were recorded and placed on Youtube.? You can find the details of the program and the videos here. https://www.vlinderstichting.nl/futureofbutterflies/programme Neil Jones neil at aurinia.co.uk From entomike at gmail.com Sat Apr 24 13:34:58 2021 From: entomike at gmail.com (Mike Quinn) Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2021 12:34:58 -0500 Subject: [Leps-l] Austin Butterfly Forum Zoom Meeting - Monday, April 26 @ 7 pm (CST) Message-ID: Greetings Butterfly and Insect Enthusiasts! Hope everyone is getting out to enjoy the beautiful spring weather as well as the flora and fauna! The Austin Butterfly Forum is thrilled to have Betsy Betros speak to us via Zoom this Monday, April 26 @ 7 pm (CST) Zoom link to join presentation: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87269323860 Betsy will speak to us about her most impressive guide to the butterflies of the butterflies of the Kansas City region and what she's been up to since! Betsy Betros. 2008. A Photographic Field Guide to the Butterflies in the Kansas City Region. Kansas City Star Books, Kansas City, MO. 407 pp., more than 1,100 photographs. Title: Writing a Butterfly Book and then Coping with the Aging Process! Bio: I Retired after 35 years involved with environmental protection regulations. Majored in Entomology back in the day at Colorado State University, but focused on aquatic insects. Decided to start learning terrestrial insects, and haven?t stopped despite the creaks and groans of aging! I started the seemingly insane idea of writing a book on the butterflies of the Kansas City Region when I turned 50 and then 4 years later it was published. I then embarked upon a journey to study and photograph all the other bugs and spiders in my area. As arthritis got the better of me, I have continually modified my approach to bug photography to adapt Betsy's guide was very warmly reviewed in the Journal of the LepSoc: https://bit.ly/3apFrbn ================================================================================== The Zoom meeting link is also on our Austin Butterfly Forum website and our Butterfly Forum Facebook Page . Please share this invitation with anyone you think might be interested! To ensure notices of future meetings, please consider joining our club: http://austinbutterflies.org/html/membership.html ================================================================================== Our May 24 Zoom meeting will be ?Spring? Show and Tell, patterned after the successful Show and Tell meeting we have each November. It's open to all Austin Butterfly Forum Facebook site participants and club members. Participants will have 10 minutes or less to share. This will be a fun and *informal* chance to let us know about your latest discovery, something you've learned, or a favorite location for butterflies and moths. You might show butterfly and moth images from your garden, or talk about almost any butterfly-related topics. For instance, Brian Abel wants to show off our new Butterfly Forum website. Please contact the coordinator, Dan Hardy, at dhh787 at yahoo.com before the 24th to arrange a practice run-through of your presentation. (This will help minimize any glitches during the meeting.) ================================================================================== Mike Quinn, vp, programs Austin Butterfly Forum entomike at gmail.com 512-577-0250 - cell * Please let me know if you do not wish to receive future ABF announcements *** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From neil at aurinia.co.uk Fri Apr 30 14:15:55 2021 From: neil at aurinia.co.uk (Neil Jones) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2021 19:15:55 +0100 Subject: [Leps-l] BBC news politics and butterflies Message-ID: This is an example of how here in? the UK wildlife conservation is starting to be taken seriously by political parties. There may be things to be learned here about politicians and nature that can be used elsewhere. I live in Wales, which is one of the constituent nations of the UK. The others are England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Wales has its own parliament called the Senedd. The double DD is a voiced TH sound like in This and The but not in Thick or Thin. Wales has its own language and the reason we use DD for this sound is to do with the complicated Celtic grammar of the language. We have elections to the Senedd next Thursday which will elect our representatives for the next 5 years and importantly most environmental legislation is controlled in Wales, with the parliament in London having no say in it at all. The BBC produces news programs for Wales and there is a midday bulletin. I wasn't surprised to see that nature was being taken seriously by politicians, because as a conservationist I've been on a number of Zoom meetings with them pressing them to take nature seriously recently.? However I was pleasantly surprised to see the lead item on yesterday's? midday news was about the politics of? nature and the Senedd illustrated by work on a butterfly. You will also notice in the introduction that they've used Monarchs to illustrate it. Only one has blue wings! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KlVfNwCIw4