Crown Daisies, Dwerja, Gozo. Photo © Jesmond Harding On 1 April 2024 on a sunbaked hillside east of Qala village in Gozo, I enjoyed Swallowtails, Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, Clouded Yellows, Long-tailed Blues and Wall Browns. The temperature exceeded 31 Celsius that afternoon, the highest ever recorded in Malta during April. The airborne Swallowtail is eye-catching, blending silk with steel as it manoeuvres intense hilltop gusts. On ethereal high ground, this elusive butterfly evanesces beyond and within view, the ubiquitous cream Coraline limestone absorbing it only for it to condense to a ..read more

British Swallowtail reared specimen. Photo copyright Peter Eeles. Source: www.ukbutterflies.co.uk When I was eight, my father bought me a book, A colour guide to familiar Butterflies, Caterpillars and Chrysalides by Josef Moucha, beautifully illustrated by Bohumil Vančura. There was not much money in our home, so I was surprised as well as delighted with the book. Many happy hours were passed drawing and painting butterflies from the book. The first butterfly illustrated is the Swallowtail Papilio machaon. The illustrations show the butterfly with wings extended, the pupa affixed to a dead ste ..read more

Biodiversity Ireland Issue 2 Autumn/Winter 2023 is published by the National Biodiversity Data Centre. Among other interesting biodiversity topics, it reports on trends in Ireland’s butterflies, giving interesting information about abundance trends since 2008, the baseline year for transect recording in Ireland, and phenology or specifically in this case, the timing of butterfly flight periods. Just a quick reminder about what butterfly transect walking involves. In Ireland, the main flight period lasts from April to September. Accordingly, a fixed route likely to contain butterflies is walked ..read more

Butterfly Conservation Ireland Annual Report 2023 is now available at https://butterflyconservation.ie/wp/butterfly-conservation-ireland-annual-report-2023/ We hope you enjoy this report. A free hard copy is available to all members on request. We are looking forward to the butterfly season in 2024 which we will report to you early in 2025. The Comma had a great year in 2023 by continuing to expand its range in Ireland.     ..read more

This week the EU’s climate service Copernicus published figures for 2023. The headline statistic is that the temperature rise recorded last year, for a year, was the highest they had ever seen on record. But are we getting as full a picture as we should be? Global surface air temperature highlights arising from the Copernicus data:  2023 is confirmed as the warmest calendar year in global temperature data records going back to 1850. 2023 had a global average temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016. 2023 was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 ave ..read more

The short, dark days draw in so swiftly as 2023 hastens to a close. With Christmas to break the winter gloom, cheer is welcome, but the butterfly lover mourns the loss of colour and character that butterflies bring to life. Butterflies animate our world in ways no other creatures do. Their affinity with flowers creates multiple vistas of beauty and the irresistible power to fire imagination. Added to this palette is their link with bright sunshine that draws out colour, texture and form in ways nothing can, and perfection and happiness are defined. If this is not enough, our collective anxiety ..read more

Sunshine, companionship, and conservation combined at Butterfly Conservation Ireland’s reserve at Lullybeg on Saturday 11 November. We have endured torrential rain at the reserve and in Ireland in 2023. In March, April, July, August, September, and October the country had above-average rainfall, with July being the wettest month on record at 12 weather stations. November has been wet so far, but not on Saturday. Much of the northern section of the reserve has benefited from recent cattle grazing, and we plan to resume the grazing next spring, because the cattle still have work to do, with a ve ..read more

It is great to have some positive news to report. Butterfly Conservation Ireland’s reserve at Lullybeg has benefitted from a generous grant provided by Kildare County Council and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (NPWS). This article describes the reserve and explains how the grant has been applied to fulfil our conservation objectives. Lullybeg Nature Reserve is a Bord na Móna rehabilitated cutaway, managed since 2010 by Butterfly Conservation Ireland (BCI). It is listed in the Bord na Móna Biodiversity Action Plan 2016-2021. It is described as a site of national i ..read more

October is the last month of the year to see butterflies in any numbers. What can be seen is even more crucially weather dependent, but this year’s October has seen some exceptionally warm weather, with some good abundance figures for the time of year. Red Admiral, County Meath, 13 October 2023. We are seeing some unseasonable behaviour. Today (14/10/2023) I observed a courtship flight by a Red Admiral pair, and it appeared destined to culminate in mating. The gentle fluttering flight used by both sexes is a sign of female cooperation in this butterfly, and if the pair remained in the lane ins ..read more

Time, like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the op’ning day. (O God Our Help in Ages Past, Isaac Watts, 1674-1748) Since humans learned to manipulate the environment to produce food, the natural world has been changing. Some people try to help nature by trying to restore what once was. Conscious not just of nature’s fragility but also of our mortality, the desire to leave something good is a powerful motivation. The following article reviews, briefly, what we have lost, describes efforts to reintroduce lost butterflies, and assesses the val ..read more