Thursday 1 October 2020

Garden Butterfly Survey results for September 2020

 

20 September 2020, Peacock butterfly in our Suffolk garden

 

 
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been taking part in the Garden Butterfly Survey this year, organised by Butterfly Conservation. Each month I post my sightings. For the purposes of this survey, these represent the highest number of a particular species seen at a time, rather than the total count of that species. 
 
Eight different species were seen, including the Brown Argus, a new butterfly species for the garden this year. Sadly though I failed to see a Small Tortoiseshell here all summer, and I read on the results of the Butterfly Conservation Big Butterfly Count 2020 that records for this beautiful species were down generally by a massive 41%. The weather is currently much cooler, and I wonder how many more 2020 garden sightings I will have...

5 comments:

Mike Perry said...

A lovely photo, Caroline and interesting to see your Butterfly Survey results.
Looking very gloomy in Cornwall at the meoment.

Lowcarb team member said...

A lovely photograph of the Peacock Butterfly.
It is worrying that the count for the Small Tortoiseshell was down by 41%, that is massive!

Wishing you a happy October.

All the best Jan

Ragged Robin said...

So interesting to see your sightings. I take part in that survey too. Sad news about Small Tortoiseshell although I have seen a few here but overall numbers of that species and Red Admiral and Peacock were down again here. Plenty of Small and Large Whites though but not many Green Veined. Holly Blue and Speckled Wood did ok here. Well done on the Brown Argus :) and lovely photo.

Caroline Gill said...

Thank you all for your kind comments... and, alas, no butterfly sightings today in the garden.

Crafty Green Poet said...

Interesting to see your results Caroline. It's certainly sad about small tortoiseshells. We saw a red admiral just yesterday, very late for any butterfly to be around in Edinburgh!