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NEWSLETTER No. 42 -  Spring 1999

WEST MIDLANDS BRANCH, BUTTERFLY CONSERVATION

 

Letters

From Mark Farmer

The role of Field Trips

These events have important educational and conservation aims. For some they are an opportunity to see and recognise, perhaps for the first time, living butterflies in their natural habitats. We are fortunate, within our region, to have a large percentage of British species. To view the remainder and appreciate their special habitat requirements longer trips are needed. Knowledge and understanding of these requirements are vital to improving the survival prospects of our butterflies.

However I feel the main value of field trips to the Branch is that they help to knit people together as a group. Also it gives new members the chance to become involved and learn about the importance of recording and conservation tasks.

Mark Farmer

P.S. I would be delighted to receive any suggestions for future field trips especially in the Staffordshire area, particularly if you would be willing to lead the party.

In the autumn of 1998, Ordnance Survey published a new street atlas of the West Midlands postal area. It could be a really valuable help to those like me, and hopefully lots of others, who intend to be tetrad-bashing in Birmingham and the surrounding areas, especially this last year before the millennium. It gives continuous coverage from Cannock to Redditch and Stourbridge to Coventry, all at 3.5 inches to the mile. The overwhelming virtue of this street atlas is that it gives grid reference lines throughout this area as well as street names, and all the usual street map details. For butterfly recorders around Birmingham this is a wonderful luxury. Christine and I found these grid lines, combined with the very large scale, tremendously useful when entering your record form data on the computer and this year it will travel everywhere with us.

The Street Atlas shows all roads, from motorways to minor, footpaths, parks, canals, railway stations, building lines and almost all the features on the standard 1.25 inch to the mile (1:50000) as well as many which are not. Many useful landmarks in addition to street names, such as parks and stations also appear in the index (with postcodes and 0.5 km2 reference). Die-hards will however bemoan the loss of contour lines and a few features, such as electricity pylons.

Each page lines up exactly with the adjacent ones, in normal OS style (no overlap). I found this to be annoying on occasions in a street map. As the 100 km square grid reference letters (SO, SP etc.) do not appear on the standard map pages, you have to be sure of your location to at least this accuracy!

The OS West Midlands Street Atlas is in colour and comes in three styles:

Large hardback at £12.99
7”x 10.5” spiral bound at £9.99
Pocket-sized paperback at £4.99

I find that the spiral bound version is reasonably portable, adequately large and always lies flat, even with the pages doubled back. It can be obtained from local bookshops or by phone on 01933 443849.

Jim Chance