A Good Summer for Butterflies?

[Catteraxe]

Hi,

As someone who has only recently started to seriously photograph and record butterfly sightings I'd be interested to know, from the observations of others, if this summer has been a particularly good one for Butterflies. I live in South Wales and so far this summer I've recorded the following butterflies in my back garden:
Speckled Wood, Common Blue, Comma, Small Tortoiseshell, Painted Lady, Small White, Large White, Green-veined White and Brimstone.
For my back garden this is pretty exceptional - the Brimstone, Common Blue, Comma and Green-veined White have never appeared before (at least I haven't noticed them and I do try and be observant). Have others experienced a similar influx?

[Trev Sawyer]

Hi Catteraxe... and welcome to UKBs...

Yes, many species of butterfly have had a good year. After a couple of particularly bad seasons, this year the weather has been much kinder and nature has "filled her boots" so to speak. The odd species has not faired very well, but the vast majority seem to have done well and we can only hope this continues.
Enjoy the photography and keep on recording

Trev

[jellyang]

Here in my corner of Norfolk it has not been a very good year.
It has now started to improve in the last 2 weeks.
Last year we had lots of small torts , painted ladies & peacocks. This year they are low in numbers, although still time for that to improve. Small copper and common blue are both good numbers this year.
There are winners & losers each season.

Thw good news is that Swallowtails are on the increase

I have noticed that it has been a very good year for moths.

Angie

[Dave McCormick]

In my area in the far east of Co Down, its not been a great year. I have only saw 7 small tortoiseshells this year, whereas last year when they were doing bad in places, I observed 30-40+ (25 in one day if I remember on a small area of red valerian) also white butterflies seem to be doing ok, not as well as last year with the many I was seeing (mostly large whites and the odd small)...I saw mostly small whites then for smaller white butterflies (I was asked if they were actually GV whites, but they were small and I was told it was odd I didn't find hardly any GV whites) this year it was better, I saw more GV whites, but early on the year, April-June was best time for me to see them (mostly around the coast as I was there alot to do with work and passing by)

I only saw 2 painted ladies this year, possible migrants as they were crossing Strangford Lough at quite a rate, coming this direction, they had the longer wings of migrants (not the shorter ones of local bred ones like we had many last year) and I have only seen 2 red admirals this year at all, one being in my garden.

Speckled woods are in good numbers here, I saw 10-20 in one small patch of woodland in one day when out looking. There was less ringlets and meadow browns (I saw them both much later than last year, about 2 weeks or 3 with ringlets appearing a week after meadow browns) but there wasn't as much of them as last year.

There is only one damp meadow that has common blues here, I did observe them in good numbers, first thing in the morning I was there (moth trapping there) and about 5:30am I noticed quite a few (females would not sit in a place I could photograph) but there was many ringlets and meadow browns there.

I noticed peacocks were few and far between though, I only ever saw a few this year so far. One area had quite a few, but I only ever saw one at any one time (once one left, a different one took its place) once I saw two chasing eachother, but mostly it was singles.

I did notice large numbers of real's wood white (they had a very good year as they did last year) although I didn't find any here, where I did, I found a lot.

I didn't get to all areas that have orange-tips but I saw a few and they were still doing well where I did see them (in a bog meadow that had a pond that dried up)

Overall, its not been a good year around here. However, moths are doing well, but some are not doing as well as last year (110 Large yellow underwings in a 125W MV with clear bulb one night, compared to catching 300 with similar setup one night around the same time last year) Buff Footman and Common footman are way up in numbers here, but Swallow-tailed moths were way down, I only caught a few last year, whereas they were as common as large yellow underwings with me catching 100+ one night last July in a 125W MV!

[Butterflymax]

As far as my Warwickshire back garden is concerned, 2010 has been abysmal compared to last year. During the recent Butterfly Conservation week I only saw Small Whites and one Peacock!
Species in the garden in 2010 overall so far: Small White, Large White, Holly Blue, Common Blue, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell and Gatekeeper.
Species in the garden in 2009: Small White, Large White, Brimstone, Holly Blue, Common Blue, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Painted Lady (plenty!), Red Admiral, Comma, Ringlet, Speckled Wood and Large Skipper.

I make 2009 almost twice as good as 2010! I think the problem is that where I am we had rain earlier on in the summer last year, with a sunnier July and August, whereas this year all the sunshine was in June and the first half of July. Since about July 13th it has been nearly permanently cloudy with only a handful of days of warm sunshine, which are usually when I'm at work! Still, it was nice to see a Gatekeeper back in the garden recently after an absence of about three years, and blues have been higher in number this year.