Hello Everyone,

After the recent mini freeze, a return to ‘normal’ temperatures has been most appreciative and with a few sunny days there has been some outdoor activity during the last 10 days in the Region.  A Peacock butterfly was seen by Deborah Bramwell on the 26th of January 2023 flying around the headstocks at Pleasley Pit (per Mick Gamble), whilst on the 24th of January 2023 Jim Steele saw a Humming Bird Hawk moth buzzing around a stained glass window of a pub in Ilkeston Market Place, this follows a sighting earlier in January 2023 of another individual seen on mahonia in the village of Hose, Leics (per Nick Brown). This is surely a sign of climate change for this part of the UK? Interesting to receive recent sighting from S E France from Robert Wardell, who lives in Grenoble, who has seen Red Admiral and Wall Brown as well as the migrant  Crimson Speckled Moth in his locality, whilst further afield Gordon Shaw recently visited Madeira where he was very pleased to photograph the Monarch (see attached photos).

   This month marks the Centenary of one of Derbyshire’s most famous Engineers finest achievement – the rolling off the production line at Doncaster Works of the ‘Flying Scotsman’ A1 steam engine on the 24th of February 1923. Although born in Edinburgh, Sir Nigel Gresley spent his early years in Netherseal in South Derbyshire and indeed he, his wife and other members of his family are buried in a cemetery there ( see attached photos) – I particularly like the piece of coal put on Sir Nigel’s grave. I have also attached a copy of a photo that I took on the Severn Valley Railway of the ‘Flying Scotsman’ in full steam leaving Bridgnorth for Kidderminster.

Also in 2023, it is 80 years since 617 Squadron ‘The Dambusters’ took off on the 16th of May 1943 to drop their ‘bouncing bombs’ on the dams of the Ruhr after practising over Ladybower Reservoir here in Derbyshire – the ‘bouncing bombs’ being designed by Barnes Wallis who was born in Ripley, Derbyshire, so we have a great deal of connections with the above 2 Anniversaries in this part of the UK.

As I work my way through the 2022 data for the 128 transects that were walked by our intrepid volunteers in Derbyshire last year, I have attached a list of the transect sites that had both the most butterfly numbers and the most butterfly species (see the attached)

Interestingly the average numbers seen per site in 2022 was 775 butterflies against 774 seen per site in 2021, but 21 species had an increase in numbers whereas 11 species declined including spectacularly the Small Tortoiseshell and the Peacock (both 50% down on 2021). In fact the number of transects walked last year was almost a 50 :50 split between sites that had an increase in butterfly numbers against 2021 and sites that had a decrease in butterfly numbers against 2021. So the overall situation is confirmed that despite the intense periods of heat and sun during the summer of 2022 (6 periods of heatwaves against 3 in 2021) sites that had areas of shade which protected larval foodplants and the caterpillars that use them, fared better than sites that were exposed to the full effect of the heat and sun. Let’s hope that there is no repeat of the after effects of the long hot summer of 1976 when it took at least 6 years before our butterfly populations recovered back to their previous numbers – only your surveys will prove or disprove this situation on transects in 2023!