Somerset Wildlife Trust, Area Group public meeting

Somerset Wildlife Trust  works closely with the Area Groups of volunteers who organise amongst other things, local  public meetings on natural history and conservation  subjects as well as carrying out  fund raising. The Groups provide an important feedback from all parts of the County. Hundreds of hours of volunteer labour in many forms is quite priceless. However, I'm sure I've said before that organising public meetings is always a fairly stressful activity. Mainly because we never know if anyone is going to turn up! So when the event is a new venture like last Thursday's quiz evening it was even more uncertain. But as it turned out it can be claimed a success but a number of aspects need reviewing and our organisation needs sharpening up.
What went well was that a sufficient number of members and some non members did come along, the questions went done well, we did meet up with around 20 people who don't usually come to talks and we collected enough money to cover costs. And of course most importantly everyone said they had enjoyed the evening including the committee.

With 10 sections of questions only two were natural history  ( because we didn't want to put people off) and they were challenging enough. We did intend taking a photo to prove it happened but forgot all about that in the rush and after a few glasses of wine.Should we do it again , well the committee will need to talk it over and we will see how everyone judged the event. I would say yes but with a number of important details which need to be more carefully organised.

 Identifying this butterfly was one of the questions , not too difficult but do you know its latin name?

 Photographed in our local meadow.

Some of the committee in action last year.