Collective Nouns Project

A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies

In a garden of flowers; photos and words celebrating these gorgeous creatures.

Dr Mehmet Yildiz invited us to take part in his Writing Challenges and Prompts article with the aim of helping us to improve our writing and to inspire us. I stumbled upon his article yesterday while I was actually forming a prompt with this article. Serendipity at work my friends.

I’ve enjoyed many of the prompts in the past months. Especially Rasheed Hooda’s creative photography and writing challenge.

In a recent quiz at work, while we waited for the almost non-existent cases that might flood in at any time, I was reminded of and learned quite a few new collective nouns.

I thought about what wonderful titles they would make. Also that we could all join in and create photo and word art around the titles.

I couldn’t resist sharing this link with you because the photos are exquisite. Plus you might enjoy the rest of the website about the Great British Countryside.

Here are some of my own snaps, certainly not professional but I was delighted to capture the peacock butterflies in the smaller of two botanic gardens in Prague.

In Dunfermline, Scotland last year, I caught a small tortoiseshell enjoying its favourite purple flower; a buddleja.

There’s a lot of interesting information on the Butterfly Conservation website. I had no idea butterflies had declined by such a huge percentage. Quote from the Butterfly Conservation website.

The new analyses provide further evidence of the serious, long-term and ongoing decline of UK butterflies, with 70% of species declining in occurrence (based on the BNM distribution data) and 57% declining in abundance (based on the UKBMS) since 1976.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, despite the loss of their natural habitats over the previous decades the most recent decade has shown that for some of the species threatened with extinction, the declines have halted and even small recoveries have been seen in some areas.

Examples include the Duke of Burgundy, Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Dingy Skipper. Landscape-scale conservation projects targeting threatened species have proved successful and should be rolled out to cover more species in more landscapes.

So how about joining in the celebration of butterflies with your own words and photos or choose a different collective noun to show off your photography skills?

I used my Samsung J5 mobile phone camera and Google animated the photos for me.

I’m going to share A Rabble of Bees with you all next.

Judging by the very long alphabetical list on Wiktionary this could be a fantastically long-running fun activity for both you, dear readers, and I.

Please post your links to your collective noun stories in the comments. I can’t wait to see your photos.

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