March 2023 has not been very conducive for our butterflies to emerge and enjoy any warm conditions as the Atlantic weather fronts have ensured that any sunny and warm spells have been at a premium this month – still the reservoirs are now 100% full in the Derwent Valley and Carsington Water is at 91% capacity so thankfully Severn Trent Water have captured the winter rainfall okay.
Not so good news on the butterfly front during the first 3 months of this year though – to date only 89 butterflies have been recorded in the County compared to 1174 butterflies for the same period in 2022 – just 7.5% of last year’s total, which is awful and no doubt due mainly to the knock on effect of last summer’s searing temperatures when we had 6 periods of heatwaves including a maximum temperature of 39c on the 19th of July 2022 here in Derby.
As well as the 5 hibernators/over winterers as shown on the attached excel sheet, there have been a handful of other species seen locally during the last 10 days or so, including:-
Small White :- Just one individual seen and photographed at Foxlow near Staveley on the 22nd of March 2023 (Mark Radford)
Orange Tip :- A male of the species was seen and photographed in a garden in Wollaton Notts on the 25th of March 2023 (Dave Gilbert)
Speckled Wood :- Just a three recent sightings in the Region – one at Eccleshall, Sheffield on the 18th of March 2023 (per Ben Keywood), one at Chesterfield on the 27th of March 2023 (per Sid Morris), and another at the Forge site in Ironville on the same day (Sally Fisher).
Please find attached copies of blank transect Recording Forms (in both Excel and Word) together with an example of the Casual Recording Sheet in excel which I would be pleased if you could use a copy of this for your casual sightings, in the same format – some recorders email this to me every week whilst others email it to me monthly, dependant on how many records they have – this will help me tremendously in the inputting of data into the National Database. Hopefully all volunteers have now received a copy of the transect rota for their sites – all we need now is some decent weather and butterflies!
In a bid to cut down the amount of time that I spend on my computer, I will not be acknowledging receipt of butterfly casual and/or transect records again this year but you can get an automatic acknowledgement from me if you carry out the following simple task – when you go into Outlook, go to Options on the top line, click on 2 boxes (Request a Delivery Receipt and Request a Read Receipt) This will then automatically confirm my receipt of your email as soon as I open it – simples! Naturally I will respond to any of your queries, especially to I D of butterflies, in the usual way or if I have any queries on your recording forms.
I was pleased to see and chat to the Derbyshire Recorders who attended the National Recorders Meeting in Birmingham on the 25th of March 2023 – one of the guest speakers did a Presentation on the deposition of nitrogen and its effect on butterflies here in the UK, using the Wall Brown as an example of a species which has suffered due to the effects of nitrogen which we here in Derbyshire suspected as a result of the changing life style habits of the species at its now main location in the Peak District.
Finally the transect season starts tomorrow (1st of April 2023) and the latest forecast suggests that we could get a warm and sunny day on Monday the 3rd of April 2023 so there is some hope for a fairly decent result in Week 1 of the butterfly recording season.
