Look out for butterflies!

Last week, you may have read or heard about the latest monitoring results from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. It wasn't good news. Although 2017 was better than 2016, it proved to be the seventh worst year for butterflies since the survey started in 1976. You can read all about the results on the Butterfly Conservation website.

That 2017 was a better year was illustrated by our own results at Conwy, but we don't yet have the benefit of 40 years of data! Volunteers Rob and Ruth Morgan (with help from Tony Gallon when they're not available) diligently walk the same route around the reserve once a week between the start of April and the end of September, recording butterflies, day-flying moths, dragonflies and bumblebees. They walk 2,700 metres every time, building up a picture of these invertebrate groups at the reserve. The cold start to this Spring has meant we've had very few butterfly sightings to date, and we've pretty much by-passed the first generation of orange-tips this year.

The latest North Wales branch newsletter from Butterfly Conservation was published this week, and includes an article about all the butterflies recorded here. You can download an extended version of that article (pdf) below.

We have recorded 28 of the 59 UK species of butterfly at Conwy, which isn't bad for a general area of grassland and scrub that didn't even exist 30 years ago! It's too early to detect any real trends in our butterfly numbers from the transects surveys, but ringlet and large skipper seem to be getting established here, while some species have only occurred here on a handful of occasions.

If you've been to the reserve recently, you'll have seen the scrub management that we undertook over the winter. As new growth comes through, the greater diversity in vegetation should benefit butterflies and moths, and if you visit on a warm, sunny day in June and July, you should see a good variety of adults on the wing. Do let us know what you've seen, by recording your sightings in the book in the Visitor Centre so we can share them with other visitors, and so Ruth can transfer this information into our recording database.

So, as Spring progresses, look out for butterflies!