Some of you may remember when I sowed this field with wildflowers and put in the hedge. Each year butterfly, bee and other insect numbers increased until this year. The bees are doing well but apart from Speckled Woods on the boundary other species appear only occasionally as singletons.
I've had to give up recording as I can't now distinguish flying butterflies beyond their general colour, but I still maintain these three acres for the ungrateful invertebrates.
Is this just a local (SW Surrey) occurrence, or are butterfly numbers down elsewhere?
Spring butterfly numbers were down, but what we are going through now is the ‘June Gap’. But the end of this month, your Meadow should explode into life with Skippers, Meadow Browns, Ringlets and others!
as essexbuzzard said, there is a gap between the Spring species and the Summer species.
today i walked 5 miles in the Chilterns and saw a handful of butterflies.
i am sure you will get some pleasant surprises in a couple of weeks.
Looking at the wonderful habitat you have created I am pretty certain you will have more than your fair share of summer butterflies in the coming weeks - the ‘June Gap’ always used to cause me some concern that butterfly numbers had crashed for some reason, normally adverse weather, but to date I have routinely been proved wrong.
Let us know how it goes.
Kind Regards
Mark
The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours lights and shades, these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.
If the OP is referring to numbers thus far this year (and not 'the June gap'), I will just mention that my (very!) local patch, Southampton Common, has had it's worst year in a decade.
The Common is characterised by small (meta?) populations of species like Holly Blue, Small Copper, Common Blue, Small Skipper, and Small Heath found in various small areas of wildflower meadow with the appropriate foodplants (e.g. Bird's Foot Trefoil for the Common Blue). These populations vary from year to year (never abundant!) - sometimes no imagos are found - but always (generally) make a come-back the next year.
The experience this year is that all species have had a bad / very bad year, to date. I've never seen that before. Even the more 'general' species such as Brimstone, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Speckled Wood (found throughout the Common) have only appeared in depressingly low numbers.
Am expecting Marbled White, and Meadow Brown to appear soon, so will continue to monitor the situation.
Your lack of sightings mirrors mine, or vice versa. You are 50 miles SW of me.
The year started with intermittent sightings of Brimstones but apart from the flush of Speckled Woods everything else is remarkable for its absence, One Common Blue, a single Small Copper and Holly Blue, two or three Small Whites, and less than the usual Red Admirals appearing from the garden sheds in the first sunshine.
Thank you very much for your efforts John & enthusiasm.
It was very important for me also, that Butterfly Conservation provided special services for partially sighted, people with visual impairment and blind, at their social gatherings.
I agreed that generally, Spring numbers of butterflies were down. But with efforts like yours and projects like #NoMowMay and no summer or late Spring drought this year (In Lincolnshire), annual habitat was left for longer, with less than average fire risk. That was thought to have been good for insects and wildlife food chains, generally.
Specifically for butterflies, try encouraging the native biennial and perennial plants the butterflies need for life cycles, as they get grazed anyway by the species that depend on them.
In my understanding, the not so good Spring, left single annual brooders like Peacock and Brimstone a little susceptible, for low numbers, in next Spring’s sightings,
