Numbers still low

3/6/2022

Here we are at Week 10, and we're still waiting for the 2022 season to provide butterflies in anything like their normal numbers. GH and BG walked this week's transect on Thursday and, with a temperature of 24C, plenty of sun and only a gentle breeze, conditions were ideal but this week's total of 34 was disappointing and possibly worrying. The usually reliable highest scoring two sections of Fames Rough were bettered by Hill Wood Field's score of only 8 butterflies.

But it wasn't all bad: we saw our first Large Skipper, Small Tortoiseshell and Meadow Browns.

We also did our usual check of the Kidney Vetch patches, especially as it's now Small Blue season. The KV on Hither Field is just starting to come through and the KV in the fenced-off square in Barn Field is more advanced and has begun flowering but no butterflies were seen there. However we were advised that beside the Stagbury Lagoon there was a a mass of KV in full flower which was attracting numbers of Small Blues. GH and BG went to the Lagoon to investigate after finishing the transect's set route and were amazed to see a sizeable area thick with knee-high bright yellow KV that was busy with bees. Sure enough, there were also SBs flitting about – easy to see but difficult to count because of their small size, their agility and the density of the flowers. We estimated that at any one time there were at least four SBs in sight. The Lagoon's KV is the most successful that we've propagated so far and hopefully will encourage other SBs to visit our other patches as they come into flower.