Newport Wetlands is a wonderful place for wildlife of all descriptions. It’s not just about birds, even though that’s what we often seem to focus on.
For this blog, we’ll focus on the butterflies that, with a bit of patience and the right choice of weather, you can find on the reserve, and we’ll talk a bit about how what happens behind the scenes to build our knowledge of which species are here, where and when.
For a start, let’s look at how abundant each of our species is. We can quickly see that (From top left to bottom right) Meadow brown, Gatekeeper and Speckled wood are the most abundant by a wide margin and Brimstone, Clouded yellow and Marbled white are rarely seen.
Image credit: Jeremy White
Figure 1: The total of our UKBMS counts for each butterfly species from 2013 - 2022.
We can be confident in these figures because they’re taken from the weekly survey carried out for the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme [https://ukbms.org/]. Four of us take turns to walk a set route, following strict rules for counting, on the day with the best weather for butterflies. Typically, we choose the day most likely to be warm, dry, sunny and windless as that’s what butterflies like most. This is one of our behind-the-scenes citizen science projects.
Figure 2: the total of our UKBMS butterfly counts in each month for 2013 - 2022.
We can dig into the data a little further and answer questions like “which is the best month to see butterflies” or “when can I see such and such a species”? July and August are by far the best months.
If you want to see orange tips, your best bet for this species, which has a really early flight period, would be to visit in April or May.
Figure 3: the total count of our counts for Orange tip butterflies showing their early flight period
If you’d prefer to watch Green-veined white butterflies, you could choose to come either in May or in July/August as this species has two hatchings each year and so has two flight periods.
Image Credit: Jeremy White
Figure 4: the total counts for Green-veined white butterflies showing their two flight periods.
Figure 5: the number of butterfly species reported each week this year by our visitors
Our sightings board data give us a better idea of the visitor’s perspective. This isn’t quite the same as the weekly surveys for a number of reasons (we often can’t check unusual sightings, for example, and we can’t say that the same effort goes into observing and reporting butterflies each week). What we can say is that our visitors start seeing butterflies in mid-March and the variety they tell us about increases through to July and August. In the last week of July, the sightings board listed Brimstone, Clouded yellow, Comma, Common blue, Gatekeeper, Green-veined white, Holly blue, Large white, Meadow brown, Painted lady, Peacock, Red admiral, Small copper, Small skipper, Small tortoiseshell, Small white, and Speckled wood (Week 31).
Most of us have some personal stories about the butterflies we’ve seen or tried to see.
Early in July two of our visitors showed our meet and greet team a photo of a butterfly which was very different to all the others they’d seen that day. It wasn’t one we’d seen on the reserve, either so we had to delve into the books, check some online databases and ask a couple of our local experts. In fact, our visitors had found a Dark Green Fritillary [photo] and we were able to record only the second ever seen on the reserve (the first was in 2018). This species is widespread in Wales, but occurs in small, very localised clusters. The nearest to us is nearly ten miles away near Rogiet.
One of our regular surveyors laments “why don’t I ever see a Clouded yellow? I always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time!”. In fact, we see several late each summer, but they’re mostly closer to the seawall and not covered by our transect route.
Another has noticed that “The Brown Argus has been reported more frequently on the Levels this summer than other summers. This might be a sign of expansion/colonisation, but we can't be sure.” I’ve noticed the same and been able to photograph a couple on the reserve.
Butterflies seem to make no sound at all unlike our bumblebees, so one of my colleagues wonders “What would butterflies sound like if they could talk to us?”
Our education team commented that “Our schools have really liked the butterflies. For me, waiting for a coach full of primary pupils next to the big Buddleia by the car park which is always full of Red admirals.”
Image credit: Emma Reynolds
So, if you like in depth knowledge about our butterflies or just enjoy watching their colourful and rather haphazard flight, we have something for you.