July 2024

[David M]

Some warm, settled weather is badly needed or this year could go down as one of the worst ever for butterfly numbers...

[Ian Pratt]

Some warm, settled weather is badly needed or this year could go down as one of the worst ever for butterfly numbers...

I agree. Here on the Isle of Wight it has been atrocious.

[aeshna5]

Some warm, settled weather is badly needed or this year could go down as one of the worst ever for butterfly numbers...

I agree. Here on the Isle of Wight it has been atrocious.

I was in Pembrokeshire for 4 days last week where there wasn't a heatwave but pleasantly warm & managed 6 Meadow Browns, a couple of Ringlets, a Large Skipper & 2 Red Admirals- dismal. Fortunately the flora & bird life was amazing, but very few insects apart from good numbers of dragonflies at Teifi Marshes.

[David Lazarus]

Good year for Ringlet so far this year any one?

Ringlet male
Pound Wood 28/06/2024

[millerd]

Good year for Ringlet so far this year any one?
2024.06.28 Ringlet Pound Wood.jpg

Just a very limited snapshot, David, but during my recent visits to Chiddingfold Woods mainly for Purple Emperor (which take place annually at the same time of year) I'd agree that Ringlets are having a good year there and certainly better than 2023.

Cheers,

Dave

[Neil Freeman]

It looks like Ringlets are having a good year around my patch here in the midlands but I think that is in comparison to everything else here having a poor year.

Cheers,

Neil.

[David Lazarus]

It looks like Ringlets are having a good year around my patch here in the midlands but I think that is in comparison to everything else here having a poor year.

My comparison is with last year, Neil, when the numbers for Ringlet were down around my local patch. I think the warm, wet weather conditions creating ideal conditions for this cool, damp-loving species, within the woodland rides especially, seem to have increased the survival rate of larva - perhaps I am mistaken but it just seems that way. Also, the spring butterflies Green-veined White & Orange-tip benefited, maybe for the same reason, I don't know. Not too bad in Essex I would say so far, apart from a few weeks of nothing much - how about the anomaly of record numbers of Heath Fritillary in the South Essex woods for 2024?

Here is hoping everyone enjoys a bumper emergence of our colourful friends this summer

[Neil Freeman]

It looks like Ringlets are having a good year around my patch here in the midlands but I think that is in comparison to everything else here having a poor year.

Also, the spring butterflies Green-veined White & Orange-tip benefited, maybe for the same reason, I don't know. Not too bad in Essex I would say so far, apart from a few weeks of nothing much - how about the anomaly of record numbers of Heath Fritillary in the South Essex woods for 2024?

Low numbers of both GVW and Orange-tip around my patch this spring. Not seen a summer brood GVW yet. Heath Fritillary certainly seem to be doing well down your way going by some of the reports and photos I have seen on here and elsewhere on social media. Unfortunatly we don't have any 'premium' species around here so I can only go on how the more common and widespread stuff is doing here.
I think I need to move a bit further south

Cheers,

Neil.

[David Lazarus]

Low numbers of both GVW and Orange-tip around my patch this spring. Not seen a summer brood GVW yet.

Sorry Neil, I wanted to cheer you up. The summer brood of Green-veined White emerged today here in Baddow Meads:

Green-veined White male
Meadgate Fields Open Space 01/07/2024

.... and how they did with plenty of activity seen

Green-veined White male & female
River Chelmer 01/07/2024

and also the Small Tortoiseshell which I am delighted about as they had a really bad summer last year:

Small Tortoiseshell female
Baddow Meads 01/07/2024

and also the first of the Gatekeeper appeared today too [they must all know it is July]:

Gatekeeper male
Meadgate Fields Open Space 01/07/2024

Meadow Brown numbers are starting to improve after a slow start with around 100 seen over the flood plain today, down by about 50% of the usual numbers so far - not sure why:

Meadow Brown male
Baddow Meads 01/07/2024

although the Ringlet are already looking worn and tatty after only six days:

Ringlet male x 2
Meadgate Fields Open Space

The Marbled White is still on his own waiting for some company to keep this vulnerable colony going - hopefully later in the week I will be able to give you some good news:

Marbled White
Meadgate Fields Open Space 01/07/2024

And in contrast the Essex Skipper are thriving in the meadow full of the tall lush grass and nectar rich flowers that have benefited from the warm wet spring. Numbers are now approaching the 50 mark within a relatively small area:

Essex Skipper
Meadgate Fields Open Space 01/07/2024

Essex Skipper
Baddow Meads 01/07/2024

And finally, after the Comma disappeared first of the over-winterers quite suddenly, they have emerged before the others and it feels like they are doing much better than last year so far, with some lovely-looking ones seen as well:

Comma
River Chelmer 01/07/2024

A pretty good start to July in Chelmsford with 204 butterflies seen from 13 species

[millerd]

A pretty good start to July in Chelmsford with 204 butterflies seen from 13 species

That very much mirrors my start to July, David - despite largely cloudy conditions, there was a lot of UV coming through and there were 200+ butterflies of 14 species around on my local patch on the other side of London: I was able to add Large Skipper today to the list for the last day of June.

As with you, new brood GVW have appeared...

...and my small and relatively new Marbled White colony continues to produce fresh examples.

Among the many hundreds of Meadow Browns I've seen since they started to emerge on 2nd June, until today I had not seen any of the variety with bleached wings - today I found two in quick succession. The first was a very pale wraith of a butterfly...

...but the second was more striking with the lack of pigment only affecting the hindwings.

Dave

[bugboy]

Found my first Gatekeeper of the season on my work transects in central London today. The thriving, if rather small colony of Essex Skipper have also emerged in recent days here too, eleven males recorded today.

I know they're all Essex as I've been looking closely on non survey days too and have yet to find a Small here. In fact I've only seen one Small Skipper so far this year, also at work (in a different area) over the weekend. Talking of Skippers, the Large Skippers have only just started appearing on my work transects last week. Some very peculiar flight patterns this year

My transect results so far this year do show (perhaps unsurprisingly) its a rather poor year so far, although not the worst, that goes to 2021 (Covid meant no transects were done in 2020). They also show that July is by far the busiest month for sightings with well over half of the years sightings usually recorded in the next four or five weeks. This is primarily because the bulk of sightings is made up of Gatekeeper, Small White and Speckled Wood which all surge post 'June gap'. Below is a breakdown of totals up to the first week of July followed by the end of year totals for the years I've been doing these transects:

2016 - 123, 258
2017 - 167, 402
2018 - 168, 520
2019 - 153, 324
2021 - 60, 300
2022 - 121, 319
2023 - 123, 415
2024 - 85, ?

Lets hope I have a good surge this year!

[Ian Pratt]

This year my wife and I decided to make our garden more wildlife friendly, so after no mow May we have let the grass and flowers grow. We sowed some wild flower seeds in the spring and we have a lovely crop of oxeye daisies, birdsfoot trefoil, and other wild flowers. Sadly, there are no insects or butterflies. We had one painted lady earlier in the year on valerian, plus a holly blue and a couple of whites. Clearly the worst year for butterflies in the past 20 years.

[Jack Harrison]

Mothing

My reduced mobility (after 79 years butterflying) means that chasing over rough ground is now impossible at age 85.  So I got my moth trap out of storage and set it up in the garden.

My dear wife showed great interest in the catch (she hadn't done previously).  She tried to get moths to crawl onto her hands, but of course they were having none of this, so they flew off - not many in any case though.

But this Poplar Hawkmoth avoided her attention.

Apparently, Poplar Hawkmoths don't feed as adults.

Jack

[millerd]

My first Purple Hairstreaks of 2024 seen late this afternoon squabbling around the top of the line of small oak trees next to the M25 J14 roundabout. A little earlier I'd rediscovered an Essex Skipper colony next to the roundabout at the other end of the A3113. This curious tiny roadside colony flourished until about three years ago, and I thought they'd disappeared - but here they are again in a most unlikely spot.

In a day of two halves - one drizzly and cool and the other bright and sporadically sunny - I continued to find a good variety of butterflies on my local patch.

More details in my PD in a week or so...

Dave

[Jack Harrison]

Butterflies do crop up in the most unlikely places.

Some 30 years ago when I was halted in traffic on the A1 at Hatfield, Herts, there in scrub at the edge of Tesco was a Green Hairstreak.

Another unusual sighting of a Greenie was while I was waiting at Craignure for the Isle of Mull to Oban ferry.

Jack

[David Lazarus]

I created this tall forb grassland at the bottom of my parent's 3/4 acre garden. It is on nutrient-rich soil as it used to be my father's vegetable patch. It is about 4 to 5 years old and contains typical Essex flowering-plants, such as Ragwort Jacobaea vulgaris, Carrot Daucus carota, Knapweed Centaurea nigra, and Ox-eye Daisy Leucanthemum vulgare. It is surrounded by Holly & Ivy as well as Blackberry & Cherry Plum scrub. There is also plenty of Garlic Mustard Alliaria petiolata and Nettles Urtica dioica. It is well-sheltered and gets plenty of sun.

Tall forb meadow, Chelmsford

The butterflies and moths are coming. We now have colonies of Holly Blue, Meadow Brown & Gatekeeper. It also attracts most of the other common butterfly species. There was even a male Common Blue the other day who has since left after staying for a week or so.

Yesterday I was delighted to see the Essex Skipper have finally found it as I spotted a pair, one a male & hopefully the other a female. They look like they have just emerged, so I am hoping that last year a passing female laid her eggs and others will emerge to form the start of a new colony. Not only that, but he is a real cutie, and wins the award for the cutest skipper in 2024 so far:

Essex Skipper male
Chelmsford 02/07/2024

I had spotted a Cinnabar a couple of weeks ago and the Ragwort is now covered with larvae at various stages:

Cinnabar larvae
Chelmsford 02/07/2024

Also on the Ragwort is what appears to be a larval web containing numerous larvae:

larval web unknown
Chelmsford 02/07/2024

I did a little research but the only thing I found was this comment: With the exception of the buff-tip and cinnabar moths, the larvae of these [other] moths all spin silk webbing over their feeding area or create communal silk ‘nests’ in which they shelter when not feeding. Source: https://www.wlgf.org/moths_gregarious_larvae.html. The Cinnabar larvae are also known to be cannibalistic if there is insufficient food (which is not the case in this situation).

I wondered if anyone has any ideas who this larval web belongs to, if indeed it is one, which seems most likely.

[Kip]

A good day here for low nectaring WLH in the garden here in North Yorkshire, maybe due to strong winds(??). Here are a couple of shots, best seen by clicking on....

[millerd]

Marbled Whites probably into three figures in today's sunshine at Box Hill, accompanied by Meadow Browns, Small Heaths and more noticeably - Dark Green Fritillaries.

Anyone suffering from butterfly deprivation could do worse than pay the Burford Spur area a visit at the moment...

Dave

[Pete Eeles]

I wondered if anyone has any ideas who this larval web belongs to, if indeed it is one, which seems most likely.

Hi David - do you have a closeup shot of the larvae? That would help!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Pete Eeles]

A good day here for low nectaring WLH in the garden here in North Yorkshire, maybe due to strong winds(??).

That's good to hear, Paul - I wish my garden attracted such 'exotics'!

Cheers,

- Pete