Introduction

The map below (loading as you read if you use Internet Explorer) is Suffolk overprinted to show the density of records for the period 2010 to 2013. We have visited 944 tetrads in the first 4 years of the current 5 year recording period (2010-2014), bringing cover to 86.7% of the county, with an average of 13.1 species recorded per square.

On the map below, the white areas show squares that have no butterfly records. Those coloured yellow are under-recorded with less than 9 species found. Orange indicates between 10- 19 species and Red shows 20+ species recorded. Many long-standing unvisited and under-recorded squares lie in agricultural High Suffolk, falling between Eye and Beccles. Another thin area on the present map lies to the south-west of the county especially to the north and east of Haverhill.

We start the 2014 season with the black hole map as a helpful backdrop to identify squares without a regular recorder, and therefore worthy of special attention in future. First find your home square, and identify the closest "black holes". When the map has loaded completely, you will be able to zoom in to see the O.S. map in more detail. Be patient whilst it comes live. The best survey results are achieved with 3 visits - one in spring, another in July, and one in late summer.

Help for using the map

When you first load the page it may take a few moments for the map to appear below. The map can be zoomed and moved using the controls on the left side of the map. Double-clicking on a point on the map will zoom in one level centred on that point. The map can also be moved by clicking and dragging the mouse on a particular point of the map. Near the top-right corner of the map is a '+' icon that when clicked opens up a pop-box for turning the various map features off and on. For example, you may find it useful once you have identified a poorly recorded tetrad to turn off the coverage coloured squares so that you can see the map underneath more clearly.

Key:
	0 species
	1-9 species
	10-19 species
	20+ species

The map works reasonably quickly in most browsers apart from Internet Explorer - try Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome browsers as speedier alternatives. Most actions will take some seconds to respond in Internet Explorer.