Monday 10 August 2015

Oxford Museum of Natural History and Brookfield Park

Hawthorn Shieldbug, Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale
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



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