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

It's a jungle out there!

The back garden, that is, although the front is no better, covered in weeds again. While I was concentrating on the front, and especially while I was a bit poorly in May and then again in June, the back garden rewilded itself into an almost impenetrable mass of brambles and pendulous sedge. The compost bins are full, I've hacked back brambles a few times and burned them in the incinerator, but everything is growing so fast! The Alchemilla mollis is about to sprawl everywhere too. I'm tempted to take it out. I've surely got enough of its seed in the soil that I shall never be without it.

The patio is also inaccessible, full of pots which blow about in the wind. I haven't done any moth trapping as setting up the trap feels just too complicated. And the privet hedges, overgrown and in full flower. The sparrows have been enjoying those, as well as the aphids on the roses.

Still, there are compensations. Apart from butterflies, and the occasional damselfly, this Common Darter caught my eye.

Spittle-bugs and Cellar Slugs

There are a couple of 'citizen science' projects on my To Do list which are nagging at me.

The first is a study of xylem-feeding insects, that is, froghoppers and leafhoppers. Their nymphs (immature stages) are usually called spittle bugs, because they surround themselves with a froth of white foam, commonly called cuckoo spit, possibly because it starts to appear around the same time that cuckoos return in March or April.

Not that there are any cuckoos locally. Despite occasional sirens, traffic noise, screams and shouts from schoolchildren and the whine of power tools and bouts of banging from various neighbours, it's still quiet enough here that I would have heard the persistent cuc-koo call carried on the wind. They aren't unknown in Pembrokeshire, but they are on the UK Red List because of their declining numbers.

In recent years, the bacterial disease Xylella fastidiosa has been wreaking havoc in Europe, killing off olive and fruit trees amongst other plants. Many of our garden plants are imported from European growers, so Britain is on high alert, The plant pathogens are spread by sap-sucking (xylem-feeding) insects, yes, those spittle bugs!

As my garden is running wild, there's a lot of cuckoo spit about, plenty to study.

The second project is a study of Cellar Slugs. My view of slugs is that the ones helping break down my compost are fine, and the ones which are eating my plants should be banished, if not from the face of the earth, then to some other location where they cannot utterly destroy, for example, the pepper, aubergine and fennel plants to which I treated myself only a fortnight ago. Although, the plants could just as easily have been destroyed by snails, of which the garden also has a superfluity, despite the blackbirds' best efforts.

This study is going to involve some poking around with a torch, although my first port of call will be the compost bins.

It's stopped raining, so I'm off for a spot of spittle bug study.

If one swallow does not make a summer ...

... what does an absence of swallows mean?

I always took the old saying to mean, don't get excited just because you've seen the first swallow arrive, because it's not summer yet. 'Ne'er cast a clout 'til May is out' is also reasonable advice, although I've never quite been sure whether it means don't take your vest/shawl/whatever off until the May blossom is out, or until the end of May.

Back on the farm, the swallows used arrive quite reliably in the first or second week of April, twittering with excitement while they picked off flies and gnats which had come out to enjoy the spring sunshine. The swallows would feed up a bit and quickly settle to making or repairing nests, with mud from around the farm yard and the edge of the farm pond.

Late spring weather would always be a bit uncertain, but there was generally a period of high pressure with sunny days and frosty nights. We would generally have a last frost around the end of May.

Now 25 miles away and closer to sea level, I've not been able to establish when, exactly, the swallows and the last frost might arrive, because in the four years since I've moved, the weather seems different each year.

Every time I was out in April and then May, I listened and scanned the sky, eager for my first sighting of swallows. I caught blog and Facebook posts from people saying they'd seen swallows elsewhere in the county, but still there were none here.

Their absence worried me. What had happened? Where were they?

In the end, I saw my first swallows in Pembroke Dock on 10 May, but it was over a week before I saw and heard some here, while I was out in the garden. I heard and then saw swifts the same day. My heart lifted with joy.

The RSPB listings show the swallows' conservation status as green, although swifts and house martins are listed as amber. Migration can be hazardous; storms can take a great toll, and there were worrying reports of mist nets used to catch birds for food in Egypt. Anything which adversely affects numbers of flying invertebrates, on which swallows, swifts and martins feed, will also cause problems for them. Then they need places to nest; swifts like dark cavities, high up in a building. Martins also like to be high, building their mud cups under eaves. I used to see a lot of tattered plastic hanging from the eaves of buildings to dissuade house martins from building nests 'because of the mess they make', which is so sad. I'd love some house martins, although the local sparrows could be a problem. Swallows prefer to make their mud cups on ledges and beams in sheds and outhouses, sometimes only a couple of meters above ground level, requiring only a clear flight path in and out. I'd like some swallows too; perhaps something could be done when I come to sorting out the shed.

What if, one year, they simply don't arrive? A summer without swallows is unthinkable.

Officially Cold

The clocks have gone back to GMT and everything was covered in frost for the past few mornings. Halloween/Samhain is tomorrow, there has already been snow in the Scottish Highlands, and I'm wondering if the predictions that we're going to have a hard winter will be correct.

I've started to feel the cold (I normally run quite hot) so it's my cue to break out the wool socks, long sleeves, scarves, coats, jumpers and crochet blankets on the sofa. I'm not complaining; I love the changing seasons.

Autumn seemed to be a warm and gradual thing. We've had a lot of rain, but on the sunny days, I was distracted by spiders every time I went into the garden. Digging out compost bin #2 took a while, distracted as I was by the wildlife. So many fat, female Araneus diadematus hanging in their webs! I also found some other well-marked female spiders, but was confused about what they were until I had one in a magnifier pot and used an online resource. Even so, I couldn't get enough magnification to determine whether they were Metellina mengei or M segmentata. There were a few other spiders and harvestmen which I've not identified yet.

I don't know when the swallows slipped away this year. The local ones just disappeared at some point in September, and I saw some tail-enders fleeing westwards while I was driving over the Preselis, the weekend of the Autumn Equinox. The swifts seemed to disappear suddenly in mid-August. There were lots of blackberries this year (the best, as always, completely inaccessible) and lots of wasps. And yet again, I was completely useless with recording butterflies!

I saw potato plants flowering in the second of the free-standing compost heaps and a few weeks later dug out enough for a couple of meals. I really must get a grip on the vegetable and fruit growing next year. While I've been concentrating on the front garden this summer, the back garden has rewilded itself.

The new houses on the field behind me are still being built. During the summer, the work sometimes started at 7.30 am. No-one could accuse the builders of throwing these houses up! There is still ground-work going on (I don't know if they've finished laying the road) and the heap of subsoil nearest my back fence is taller than ever. Internal work has been going on for weeks now, and annoyingly, some of the lights get left on overnight. The buildings have been painted in candy colours which seem to glow in low light. In my opinion, it doesn't make them any less of an eyesore.

The view from my bedroom, 23 October 2018. 

There's still a way to go with them. According to the planning, there will be some young trees planted, bird boxes put up and gaps left in the soffits for roosting bats, to improve biodiversity. I wonder how long it will be before they, and the houses themselves, are inhabited.

A new moth for me

Disturbed while I was gardening, a moth flew away and settled on some grasses. Of course, I had to go and look and I'm very glad I did, as it turned out to be a moth I've never seen before. It's quite common in south and central UK, but I've only ever seen it in the field guide: Mother Shipton Euclidia mi. It was formerly named Callistege mi, but there have been taxonomic changes. I keep tripping over changes to names for plants, spiders, now moths! My first edition field guides to the (macro)Moths of Great Britain and Ireland (2003) and Micro Moths of Great Britain and Ireland (2012) use the BF (Bradley and Fletcher) number, but there is now a "new" decimal-style checklist number, corresponding to "A checklist of the Lepidoptera of the British Isles" by Agassiz, D.J.L., Beavan, S.D. & Heckford R.J. 2013, also referred to as "the 2013 checklist" and ADH numbers.

Mother Shipton moth on grass

The mirror-image cream-edged brown markings are thought to resemble the profile of a hag, so it was named after Mother Shipton, the famous16th century Yorkshire witch, who was reputed to have been hideously ugly (although, considering that witches always got a bad press, could she have been recorded as anything but ugly?). The moth may just be cream and shades of brown, but I think Mother Shipton is rather beautiful.

The larvae feed on clovers and various grasses, overwintering as a pupa on grass stems. The adult flies by day from May to July, visiting flowers such as ox-eye daisies and buttercups, and is easily disturbed, so I'm amazed I never came across it when I lived on the farm. They may be common, but the meadows and wild, grassy places that they and many other species need are becoming less so, something which makes scruffy, untamed waste places important for biodiversity.

Moths? Do you really like moths?

Hawkmoths and Honeysuckle. Top to bottom: Privet Hawk-moth, Elephant Hawk-moth and Poplar Hawk-moth.

This is becoming one of those ‘I wish I had a pound for every time someone says …’.  A moth flies around, I scuttle over to see what it is, and someone in the assembled company will say, ‘Ugh, can’t stand moths.  Don’t bring it near me.’  Guaranteed.

And then the conversation may go something like ‘They’re small and boring (and brown) or big, furry and scary (and brown). They eat your clothes, carpets and garden plants, bash into lights and crash into your face. And they fly at night and anyway, butterflies are nicer to look at. Do you really like moths?’

Yes, I do. It’s true, many are brown. Some do destroy fabrics, others damage plants and many are attracted to lights, crashing madly around the room. But they are important, and more interesting than you’d think.

Moths are divided into two main groups – macro-moths and micro-moths. As the names suggest, macro-moths are generally the larger moths, although in fact some micro-moths are larger than macros and vice versa. Almost all of the macro-moths have English names. The names generally describe some aspect of their appearance, such as their wing colours or markings. Some have intriguing names – the Exile, Delicate, Conformist and Non-Conformist, Suspected, Uncertain, and Confused (referring to the recorders being confused, not the moths!). Even the brown moths may be intricately marked, with all shades of brown, but many moths have patterns containing shades of red, orange, yellow, green, pink, purple or grey, splashed with gold, silver, copper or brass.

Moth recording is fascinating – you don’t know what you might find, and there is the possibility of finding an uncommon moth. Records add to our knowledge of moth species and help to assess the impact we’re having on the environment.

Moths form a vital part of our wildlife and ecosystems. They pollinate many plants (yes, even at night!). Although the caterpillars damage leaves, they also recycle nutrients back into the soil. Moths and their caterpillars are part of the food chain, being eaten by birds, bats and other mammals, insects and spiders, lizards and amphibians.

Moths add significantly to our biodiversity, with around 2500 species in the UK, found in all habitats from the sea shore to the tops of mountains. Moth caterpillars mostly rely on plants for food and many require somewhere undisturbed to overwinter.

Moth numbers are affected directly and very rapidly by our influence on their habitats and by climate change. Differences in moth numbers have been found between organic or extensive farms and intensive farms, with reduced numbers recorded where herbicides and pesticides have been used. The reduction in moths, as well as other insects, has a knock-on effect to other plants and animals. Moths are therefore an important indicator of the state of our environment.

62 moth species became extinct in Britain during the 20th Century and many more species are now considered to be nationally threatened or scarce. The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) lists 53 moths as national priority species for conservation. Recent research suggests that two thirds – 66%!- of common moth species are in decline.

So the next time you see a moth, why not take a closer look? A really good field guide to macro-moths is Waring, Townsend & Lewington ‘Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland’.