Farmland butterflies had a good year in 2013 – benefiting from the best summer weather for seven years. I bet you noticed more butterflies in your garden – I certainly did – and my (our?) garden observations were reflected in a much better year for butterflies across the fields of farmland Britain.
Common Blue, Small Copper, Small Skipper, Brimstone, Large Skipper and Small Tortoiseshell all bounced back in 2013 after experiencing a crash in numbers during 2012.
The Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey (WCBS) found that many farmland butterflies flourished as a result of long periods of warm, sunny weather last summer.
The annual survey, running since 2009, counts butterflies in more than 850 randomly selected 1km-squares across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to assess the health of butterfly populations in the wider countryside. Overall, most farmland species recovered in 2013 after suffering one of the worst years on record for butterflies in 2012.
Last year recorders saw an average of 85 butterflies of five species per survey made over July and August – almost double the numbers recorded in 2012.
The Small Tortoiseshell, which has suffered an ongoing decline, recorded its best summer since the start of WCBS. More than 6,833 individuals were counted with the butterfly seen in 80% of squares compared to just 40% in 2012.
Following an appalling 2012, the Common Blue had a good year with an average five-fold increase in abundance per square. The Small Copper and Brimstone were also both more widespread and abundant than in the previous year.
The Large White and Small White, were also recorded in profusion with more than twice the number of Large Whites counted per square and five times the number of Small Whites in 2013 than in 2012.
For the fifth year in succession the Meadow Brown was the most widespread and abundant species – recorded in more than 90% of squares with 8,000 more butterflies counted in 2013 than 2012.
The Holly Blue and Red Admiral were among the minority of species that didn’t have such a good year with numbers down for both compared to 2012.
Dr Zoë Randle from Butterfly Conservation, said: “Farmland butterflies really thrived last year primarily due to the fantastic summer weather which provided ideal conditions with several recording their best ever WCBS results.”
The WCBS is run by Butterfly Conservation, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) as part of the United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring scheme (UKBMS).
May we please have another proper summer – we deserve it after this wet, wet, wet winter..
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Mark
Farmland butterflies cannot live off sun alone! A nod to those farmers (and foresters) that provide the habitat would have been nice. We are all too quick to knock these ‘primary industries’ when wildlfe declines but slow to acknowledge them for any good news.
Still plenty of work to do on habitat offsetting via targeted agri-enviro schemes in return for our insatiable appetite for affordable food.
Aye
Rob – butterflies are in long-term decline! That is partly down to agriculture and farmers. Butterflies had a good year in 2013 – that was thanks to good weather.
Yes. Good news of course that numbers of any species were up last year but they were massively down the year before so these results are a demonstration of how quickly butterflies respond to weather conditions. As you say, Mark, the long term trends are down for most species and that is much more to do with the changing nature of the countryside which provides less suitable habitat for butterflies than it once did. The same story applies to moths with some ‘common’ species having shown a calamitous decline.
The Wider Countryside Survey by its design and nature censuses the most widespread and common species, the ones that are least demanding in terms of their habitat requirements and many of the habitat specialist species it does not really pick up have declined very substantially (in the long term – again the warm weather of 2013 will have helped some of these too) and are very vulnerable indeed.
Butterfly Conservation has some great projects – many involving close cooperation with land owners and farmers – and these are showing beneficial results with some of our rarest species but it would be quite misleading to think that everything is OK and all we need is a little sunshine and the habitats are there and ready for the butterflies to thrive.
Mark
You know that I am no apologist for farming but a defender of balanced debate!
The techie paper behind Defra’a Priority Species http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-4238 states – ‘Indices are calculated for butterfly species that have been recorded from five or more sites per year. The wider countryside butterfly survey has only three counts during summer and requires twice as many monitored sites to achieve comparable precision to the 26-week butterfly monitoring scheme. 430 monitoring sites on average are required to achieve 80% power (5% significance level) for detecting a 25% decline in abundance over 10 years.’
No dispute that decline but careful to work out exactly why rather than pick an easy target plus State of Nature clearly stated that data severely lacking…
But now I’ve lost my audience, as that’s all seriously dull!
Rob – State of Nature included butterfly species because the data are good ‘farmland birds and butterflies have declined substantially since the 1970s and 1990s respectively’.
I did not pick an easy target – you started this discussion by praising farmers and landowners for the decent summer of butterflies! You said we should thank farmers and yet the data show that farmland butterflies have tumbled in numbers – you’re in a bit of strange position. If I were you I’d stop digging. Although if you were me, you might not have picked up the spade in the first place.
Pass me the spade for your weasel words Mark – you know I didn’t praise farmers for the weather – merely registering a nod to those that do provide the habitat for butterflies et al.
I’m not denying the decline – autumn rather than spring cropping, less weeds etc all affects invertebrates – but when the State of Nature covered only 5% of species, we should be careful not to extrapolate across the board (as the report says in the small print) and diss all farmers trying to do the right thing – affordable food & plenty of wildlife! http://www.scribd.com/doc/129325434/my-letter-in-the-times-re-groceries-wildlife-farmers-supermarkets
Spade cleaned. Yours aye
Rob – State of Nature specifically includes farmland butterflies.
You were the person who brought farmers into it – not me. Farmland butterflies have declined since the 1990s.
Last summer was indeed wonderful. Just enough hot dry weather, which ended at just the right time, just enough rainfall and plently of sunny and warm if less hot weather in between the showers. Probably the best summer within my memory. In most other summers in the last twenty years we seem to have lurched from ludicrously hot/dry to ludicrously wet (though still warm). How do butterflies, moths and other indicator species do in very hot dry summers like 1976, 1990, 1995, 2003 & 2006?
It is not only British butterflies that need a helping hand. The Monarch butterfly is seemingly in trouble in North America. It is suggested that one possible cause is the widespread use of Round-up on glyphosate-resistant gm crops that has eliminated the butterfly’s food plant, Milkweed, from large tracts of the countryside. The Monarch, like the Passenger Pigeon, was once super abundant but I hope that effective action can be taken to stem its decline so that, in years to come, Mark will not be writing “A message from Danny” on the extinction of the Monarch Butterfly and why it matters.
I’m sure if they didn’t have Roundup ready crops they would use other herbicides to remove milkweed from their crops, so hard to point the finger at GM in this case. I understand milkweed can be poisonous to humans so not something they can tolerate to much degree in their crops, but maybe they could allow it to flourish in designated non-crop margins.
Mark, I noticed that butterfly numbers were still down in our area last year, with few species in the early summer and still small numbers during late summer and autumn. Then again, most of the habitats have been destroyed in this area for houses and sheds.
Are these figures not somewhat flawed in that if you go out counting butterflies on a dull, cool day you will see very few. If you count them on a warm sunny day you will see many more. Is butterfly activity not being measured rather than numbers. On cool sunless days the butterflies are still there but hidden amid grasses and other plants, as soon as the sun comes out they will show themselves. It is inevitable that more butterflies will be counted in a warm summer than a cool one, but this doesn’t mean that there are any more butterflies in total. It just means to some extent that under certain conditions many more butterflies are missed.
Dave – the instructions require you to go out in suitable weather. But yes, there will be an element of what you suggest. If you go out in warm days in an awful summer you will probably see fewer butterflies than if you go out on similarly warm days in a warm summer, I’d guess?
Whether the weather be hot or not the weather in the year before the weather you are talking about will determine whether you see many butterflies whether they are on the wing or not.
Not necessarily; poor/good weather in the current year could affect larval and pupal survival leading to fewer/more adults emerging later on in the summer.
I agree. Lepidoptera being picky about what they eat – I suggest the effect of weather on food plant fecundity and survival sets up +/- conditions for the dependent species. I’m thinking particularly about the increase of dog violets in my copse (I didn’t sow them) over the last few years and last summer’s outburst of Silver-washed Fritillaries – including one individual of the Valesina variant – in the garden.
That is a great garden ‘tick’!
Yep – we got them too
Given the increases in mean central England temp recorded since 1950, warmer summers are pretty much guaranteed, even if next year isn’t. That’s not a good thing by the way.
It has to be seen in wider terms rather than simply being “good” for butterflies
Steve – it doesn’t have to be seen in wider terms, every time. Otherwise every issue would be seen in the context of the whole of the universe and regarded as trivial.
Some UK butterflies are spreading north because of climate change but also declining in numbers too (perhaps partly because of climate change).
Despite the predictions of England becoming warmer and dryer due to climate change I think the opposite will be the case. I predict that the summers will be cooler and wetter and the winters will be milder and wetter. The reason? We are surrounded by water and the prevailing wind is from the west.
I’m afraid that’s just horribly wrong
UK Climate Projections 09 published detailed data complete with modelling uncertainty parameters
air temperatures are expected to increase for all areas of the UK, more so in summer than in winter. Changes in summer average temperatures are greatest in parts of southern England − up to 4.2°C central estimate (2.2°C at the 10th percentile to 6.8°C at the 90th percentile) and least in the Scottish islands − just over 2.5°C central estimate (1.2 at the 10th percentile to 4.1°C at the 90th percentile)
central estimate of average annual precipitation (any form of water that falls to the earth’s surface, such as rain, snow, sleet, or hail) suggests little change anywhere in the UK. However, the 10th percentile indicates a reduction of 16 per cent with an increase of 14 per cent at the 90th percentile
more precipitation is expected in winter with the greatest increases of 33 per cent for the central estimate expected along the west coast. An increase of 9 per cent is indicated at the 10th percentile with 70 per cent increase at the 90th percentile
largest reductions in summer precipitation of 40 per cent (central estimate) are to be seen in the far south of England. A decrease of 65 per cent is indicated at the 10th percentile with a 6 per cent decrease at the 90th percentile). More of the precipitation is expected to fall in intense episodes, especially in winter
And I don’t believe we can see things in isolation. Talking about positives like butterfly numbers is again MASSIVELY missing the point.
Oh my
gotta lol at people “disliking” what the climatologists say will happen…
enough to make you despair
“gotta lol at people “disliking” what the climatologists say will happen…”
Since they only clicked dislike and did not explain why they disliked your post we can only assume their reasons but I’d say it is a fair bet that it was not the predictions of climatologists they disliked so much as your insistence that talking about anything else is missing the point or ‘re-arranging the deck-chairs’ to quote from another of your posts.
I suspect that a large proportion of the readers of this blog recognise that climate change is a serious problem that requires serious action but where they seem to differ from you is in recognising that there are other issues that also require our attention.
If, as you seem to wish, we ignored “trivial issues” such as the destruction of nature reserves, the decline of butterflies and so on, then I suggest we would be no more effective at fighting climate change but would stand by and watch the natural environment become steadily more impoverished (and indeed less resilient to the climate change you care so much about). That is not something that I would recognise as a sensible policy.
Butterflies require reasonably warm and sunny conditions which meant that the dreadful summer of 2012 was rather unfavourable to them. It is natural that when conditions in 2013 proved more amenable to them, people that care about butterflies should express pleasure that their numbers responded positively. That does not mean that we don’t recognise the threat of climate change or that we wish that every summer would provide weeks of Mediterranean-like weather.
You seem to care strongly about climate change and all credit to you for that but if you expect everyone to wail and beat their breasts every time the sun comes out you won’t persuade many people to your cause. So please, carry on campaigning for action on climate change but don’t sneer at those who expend efforts on other important environmental issues such as the loss and deterioration of habitats and the decline of species.
Diapensia – see my comment above. I *think* I’m right that recent very wet summers have still been quite warm, and if you think about it a lot warmer than you might expect for such a correspondingly poor summer (much higher rainfall and less sunshine than average).
Granted this might be partly due to warm nights and daytime temps might not feel any great shakes, but any daytime max above about 20 point something Celsius would be above the long term average even in high summer in the far south of England. I reckon there would have been many very wet days in, for example, the summers of 2004 and 2007-12 which, on (rather soggy) paper at least would be ‘warmer than average’. The notorious ‘non-barbeque summer’ of 2009 for example was I think actually quite warm as well as extremely wet.
Lots of caveats to that of course, e.g. rain in summer falling mainly as showers, so sun pops out between showers and lifts the temperature, only for it to drop again in the next shower… this variability in day to day conditions is why climatologists measure averages and do so over relatively long periods like thirty years.
The west is generally I think a mild direction (and I think the prevailing direction for most of the UK is probably more like Southwest?) and our maritime position makes the British Isles relatively mild for it’s latitude, although as you rightly say more noticeably so in winter (think Newfoundland for comparison).
To go back to butterflies, presumably many wet days on the trot, heavier rainfall etc. reduce butterfly activity, including feeding, breeding -so the more of this happens the worse they do during our short summers. Do they or their caterpillars stand more chance of getting washed off leaves and drowning in torrential rain (so if there is more frequent and heavier rain the little blighters really suffer)?
In the 1950s we could rely on seasons being “seasonal” but not now. As the years go on the seasons are blending together so one time of the year is much the same as another. I think this is due to cloud cover so that there is more rain in summer and the same in winter. This leads to more flooding because we have drained areas which would have held short term flooding. We shall see.
“UK Climate Projections 09 published detailed data complete with modelling uncertainty parameters”
Would that be UKCP09 published by the UK Met Office? Would that be the same UK Met Office that predicted a drier winter than average for 2013/4? Would the modelling be based on the same Climastrology Models that are tuned to run hot in order to achieve the desired results? Would that be the same 75 Climastrology Models that produced global temperature projections that do not resemble the actual temperature anomaly for the past 17 years – despite atmospheric carbon dioxide continuing to rise? Who but the credulous would base any policy decisions on those models?
The stuff you have copied and pasted is not data – it’s projection from a flawed model. I’m afraid that’s just horribly wrong.
Filbert – how accurate is your climate model?
More to the point, what does she look like?
I don’t have a climate model, so the question does not arise. Qué será será.