My first butterfly of this year, a canary-yellow male brimstone, materialised in exactly the same spot as last year, zig-zagging along an ivy hedge in my garden. This year, however, its meticulous search for a female was 15 days later, testimony to the cold, late spring.
In Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll books, a golden butterfly is a lucky omen for the summer ahead, but my optimism last year was misplaced. After a mediocre 2015 (except for the brimstone, which enjoyed its best season in 40 years of scientific monitoring), 2016 is not promising much.
This winter has been horrible for butterflies. Unseasonably mild conditions for much of the winter tempted some species out of hibernation prematurely. Neil Hulme, who is overseeing a reintroduction programme for pearl-bordered fritillaries in Sussex, says the mild conditions caused captive-bred caterpillars to emerge from hibernation in December and eat themselves out of violets, and if this was replicated in the wild, many more caterpillars will have perished when winter belatedly arrived in February.
Tom Brereton of Butterfly Conservation sounded gloomy when I spoke to him about the year ahead. In the longer-term, the charity is worried about the unknown impact of neonicotinoids and how climate change is not having the beneficial impact we’d hoped for.
As the climate warms, British butterflies, most of which are at the northerly limit of their natural range, should be thriving. A few are, but most seem scuppered by extreme weather – droughts, summer rains and warm winters.
That said, a jaunty yellow insect still lifts the spirits. Butterflies will give us all much pleasure this year, if we let them into our lives.
