Big Butterfly Count 2020

One thing still possible amid all the restrictions imposed around the Covid-19 pandemic is to linger somewhere quiet for a quarter of an hour or so, and count butterflies. Despite the changeable weather for this year's butterfly count (17 July to 9 August), including several days which were a complete washout, I did several 'counts' in my garden and became quite obsessed with going out to see what I could find, noting my observations in my diary.

Here are the results, which include a couple of day-flying moths:

Species/Dates	19-Jul	28-Jul	29-Jul	30-Jul	06-Aug	07-Aug	08-Aug	09-Aug
Small White			1	1
Large White		1	1	2	2	1	1	2
Common Blue						1
Small Tortoiseshell			1	1			4	3
Red Admiral		2	2	2			1	1
Peacock		2	1	2	3	2	1	1
Comma				1
Meadow Brown			2
Ringlet	1
Six-Spot Burnet	1
Hummingbird Hawk Moth				1
Day total	2	5	8	10	5	4	7	7

11 species was quite good compared to other years, but even on the best day, I could count the day-flying lepidoptera on both hands, so I could have wished for more. There were days where I didn't really look and others where I was out in the garden for a quarter of an hour or more, but saw nothing, and then forgot to record that I saw nothing. Most of my observations were more than quarter of an hour, which probably increased the number of species observed, but the numbers are the maximum number observed at any one time, to avoid double-counting.

What no Painted Ladies, Orange Tip, Large Skipper, Speckled Wood, some sort of Fritillary perhaps? I would also have expected to see Silver Y moths on the Buddleias, if not in full sun, then at least in the evening, but I didn't see any. It might be that the adult butterflies aren't on the wing in the three weeks of the survey.

Buddleia davidii is a controversial plant. I even saw a post of Facebook claiming that the nectar is toxic to butterflies and bees. Of course, whoever posted it didn't give a source or link for reference and I have found nothing to support this (because, of course, I cannot resist searching online to do a bit of fact-checking). There's no denying it is an extremely invasive plant, which can grow in all sorts of conditions, from nooks and crannies with very little soil, light, dry soils, compacted and often wet clay, and given a nice depth of fertile soil can go from seedling to flower within one year, and become a spreading, towering shrub within two.

I have a love-hate relationship with it. I was lazy last year and didn't dead-head assiduously enough or even prune, and this year there have been seedlings everywhere, and new shrubs which escaped being weeded out last autumn (I think I thought they were Verbena bonariensis seedlings. No such luck). None of the shrubs I have are in quite the right place, a visual reminder of how much work I need to do in the garden. On the other hand, once they flower, they attract all sorts of invertebrates; not just butterflies and moths, but drone flies, hoverflies, various bumble bees and this year, lots of honey bees. Various spiders hang out in the leaves and branches, as do snails, which don't seem to do much damage to it. When I work in the garden, I get to see them all up close and get wafts of honeyed scent.

The problem with invasive species like this is that in the wild, and potentially even a garden, they can affect local biodiversity. They outcompete and replace native species of wildflowers, so reducing both species diversity and nutritional diversity of those native plant species. Although the bees, butterflies and other foraging species love the Buddleia, they need diversity as well as quantity and quality of nectar and pollen, to ensure a good nutritional content and balance, 

When I input my observations and checked my profile, I found they have leaderboards for the number of observation sessions (counts) and butterflies. I am waaaaaay down the boards;  at 3000+ for counts, at 7000+ for total butterflies seen. Not that it ever occurred to me that this was a competitive thing, but there are some very serious butterfly counters out there. I was feeling very pleased with myself to submit results from 8 counts, now I feel like I should do better next year.

Clockwise from top left:

female Common Blue; Comma, just hanging around; Busy bee; Humming-bird Hawk-moth