Nose-diving rather than fluttering by

How are you doing for butterflies in your garden this year?

I'm going to guess that you are seeing some Red Admirals, for they appear to be having an ok season. And I expect a few 'cabbage whites' are bobbing about, which in my garden are all three species - Large, Small and Green-veined, although identifying them in flight is often nigh-on impossible.

But the evidence so far across the country appears to be that 2016 will go down as a pretty dismal year for butterflies. Species such as the Common Blue and Small Skipper have been having a disaster in many places.

I monitor the butterfly numbers in my garden in a way that allows me to compare years in a consistent way that would be beyond my fallible memory. Every week, starting on 1 March, I record the maximum number of each species that I see. So if during a week I walk around the garden and see three Red Admirals on one day and four the next, the score for the week would be four. It's very much like the Big Garden Birdwatch, but done on a weekly basis.

So, even though I have been doing so much work in my garden to make it better for butterflies (such as opening up sunny areas where previously there was a closed canopy and planting butterflies' favourite nectar plants such as Marjoram and Verbena bonariensis), I know that by this time last year I had recorded 237 butterflies in total, whereas this year I have recorded just 198. That's a 15% drop when I was expecting to see a big rise.

The big loser is Gatekeeper - last year the summer's total was 51; this year I could muster just 28, despite the garden being so much more suitable for them.

People often get confused between Gatekeeper and Meadow Brown, so here are two together for comparison that I photographed on Joe-pye Weed. The Gatekeeper is the upper one, slightly smaller, slightly orangier on the underside of the forewing. But here's the clincher - look closely at the white dots in the black eye spot: two in Gatekeeper, one in Meadow Brown.

There are differences on the uppersides too, but at least that is a good ID feature when their wings are closed, as they so often are.

One of the main theories for the poor season has its roots way back last winter. Do you remember how warm December was? On average, the south of England was up to six degrees Centigrade warmer than average, and even in Scotland it was two or three degrees warmer.

Many of our butterflies overwinter as caterpillars, and the thinking is that the warm weather either kept them active, using up their on-board  fat supplies when there was nothing for them to eat, or they succumbed to fungal diseases, which many butterflies are prone to when it is warm and damp in winter.

The good news is that butterflies can bounce back, but only of course if the habitat is there for them.

So as well as our cheeky little banana banquet activity to try this month, do think whether there are other things you can do to help, especially growing foodplants for butterfly caterpillars, and letting part of your lawn become a meadow. You can make a real impact, for them and for your own watching pleasure.