Hello Everyone,

Despite a week of mild weather at the start to February 2024, it soon turned cold with snow seen across the County and settling mainly on the hilly parts of the Peak District today but with a forecast of milder weather tomorrow hopefully it will be a very short blip – all this changeable weather meant that there were only 2 outdoor butterfly sightings so far this month with a Red Admiral seen at Barlborough (Jim Mountford) and a Peacock seen at Poolsbrook  (Kev Navin per Sid Morris), both sites being in N E Derbyshire and both butterflies being seen on the 2nd of this month.

Recently UKBMS produced the 2022 Report on transects in the UK and the East Midlands sits proudly at the top of the table of most transects walked in that year (as well as 2023) but the local species which have performed the worst on transects since the scheme was started back in 1976 are Wall Brown (-85%), Small Tortoiseshell (-80%), White Letter Hairstreak (-76%) and surprisingly the Small Skipper (-71%). Pleasingly the Wall Brown is holding its own here in Derbyshire and in fact appears to be spreading east towards Notts as it regains some of its former status, whilst numbers of around 800 individuals remains fairly static despite the change to its distribution.(see the attached maps for both 2018 and 2023 for the species). It can be seen that in 2018 there were 22 locations to the east of grid line 30, which is mainly in N E Derbyshire, where the Wall Brown had been recorded, whereas in 2023 it had increased to 38 locations, an increase of 75% in its distribution in that part of the County

In the East Midlands Region we have been planting Disease Resistant Elms for a number of years now and we have proved that the White Letter Hairstreak will use these trees for their life cycle so it is not all bad news! If you would like a copy of the 2022 UKBMS Report, then please email me as it is quite a large file to send out as an attachment to a mass emailing event.

Finally, following the issue of the above Report,  It was good to receive an email from Andy Barker of the Hants and I of W Branch of B C on our achievement of carrying out the most transects in the UK whilst knocking his team off top spot – ‘I wanted to say well done to you and all involved with transects throughout the East Midlands’ which I thought was a great message to send to us all…thanks for the compliment, Andy!