Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly

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 Contrary to expectations the day warmed up enough yesterday for me to do my first butterfly transect of the season. The butterfly year starts officially on 1st April and the butterfly week 1 starts on the day of the week when 1st April falls (Thursday this year). Sometime during the 7 days starting 1st April I am supposed to walk a specific route of just over 1km which is broken up into 12 shorter sections called transects. The are certain conditions to be met - the temp should be 14C unless its sunny when it can be 11C. The wind should be force 3 or below. It shouldn't be raining, and the transect should be walked sometime between 1100 hrs and 1500 hrs.

It was only just 11C yesterday but there was not a cloud in the sky so I thought I would give it a go. You have to imagine that you are pushing an imaginary cube of 5m long sides in front of you. If a butterfly flies into the cube you identify it and add it to the tally.

There are few butterflies about at this time of the year. We only see those butterflies that overwinter as adults this early. Usually this would be Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, or Red Admiral. Other butterflies overwinter as either eggs, or chrysalises - they pause their development rather than hibernating in a process called diapause and it is a week or two before they show up. The Orange Spot is usually the first to show.

Yesterday I saw a paltry 4 butterflies  all small tortoiseshell. I am showing a photograph from my archives.


The UK has the longest running and most comprehensive dataset of any other country. Anyone can log into the UK Butterfly monitoring website to look at the data although they make you register to do this for some reason. I share the task of walking the transects on a weekly basis between April and the end of Sept with two other volunteers. The nature reserve is the Waitby Greenriggs reserve.
https://ukbms.org

Diary.
My bird box with a camera in appears to have been colonised by a queen tree bumblebee! Its not what I was planning and I doubt if the pictures will be as good as if it was used by a bird but we will go with the flow and see what happens.
Overnight cameras in the bog meadow revealed roe deer ( a female at dusk and another female at dawn - different individuals?). I also saw a badger which kindly scent marked on one of my cameras! There is still a pair of Mallard ducks hanging about the pond. It is much colder today. There is a forecast for snow later in the week.






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