I am still seeing butterflies almost daily, sunning themselves when they can and feasting on late-flowering ivy. Most are red admirals, a large, dark and powerful presence sailing through autumnal skies or feeding on rotten fruit in orchards.
It has been a vintage red admiral year, with numbers up by 75% on 2016 in Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count. But sadly it has not been a vintage butterfly summer.
With much of southern Britain enjoying a sunny May and June it once looked as if it might turn out to be the best season for a decade. But a wet July and August put a dampener on most species, which do emerge midsummer.
Heavy summer rains can wipe out whole generations. One butterfly recorder I spoke to reported seeing scores of speckled woods on his transect but, after a heavy rainfall, suddenly there were none.
It was not a disaster like 2016, when a glorious late summer arrived too late for the butterflies; nor was it like the sodden summer of 2012. Not bad, is most butterfly lovers’ grudging verdict on 2017, and that may be as good as it gets.
Our butterflies are well-adapted to the vicissitudes of the British summer but the long-term decline in two-thirds of our 59 native species shows they are less equipped to deal with rapid climatic changes or the dousing of farmland and gardens with pesticides.
Milder winters in particular appear to be disastrous for many butterfly species, though not the red admiral. Half a century ago it appeared unable to survive British winters and most individuals made the reverse migration to the continent. Now it is not only a successful hibernator, but the most commonly spotted butterfly throughout the winter months. Keep a lookout for this Christmas-coloured insect if Christmas Day is sunny.
