Oxford Museum of Natural History and Brookfield Park

Hawthorn Shieldbug, Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale

to view a gallery with more photos, click here

We visited Brookfield Park, Rustington, on August 1st for the first time in ages. Lovely flower meadows and plenty of butterflies: Common Blues and Essex Skippers in the depression by the lake, a Green-veined White, a Holly Blue and a Rush Veneer moth. There were two turtles basking on the bank by the lake.

  On Sunday August 3rd I visited Oxford with my metal detecting club. I enjoyed visits to the Ashmolean Museum and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The Pitt Rivers Museum is part of the OUMNH and I remember visiting it as a kid. The insect section of the museum engaged my interest - it is a wonderful example of how museums used to display their natural history collections. I visited the Natural History Museum at South Kensington on Saturdays as a kid and wondered at the beetles and other insects on display. Now everything is themed. I hope kids still get motivated by what they see in the modern displays, but I'm not convinced.

Brookfield Park:

Common Blue, Polyommatus icarus

Common Blue

Essex Skipper, Thymelicus lineola

False Map Turtle, Graptemys pseudogeographica pseudogeographica and another Turtle, Graptemys species

Green-veined White, Pieris napi

Holly Blue, Celastrina argiolus

Rush Veneer, Nomophila noctuella

Oxford trip:

Gough Map - section showing Isle of Wight and coast eastwards

John James Audubon, The Birds of America, London 1827-38

The Ashmolean Museum

butterfly motif top right next to octopus medallion