Completed the first survey week on our local butterfly transect today.

We saw 16 individuals in four species. To put this into context we had only ever reported a single butterfly for week 1 across all previous four years.

What a great start to the year

Just under a week to go till the start of our butterfly transect for 2025

It’s encouraging that there have been so many sightings of our early butterflies. Could this year be a good one?

Chart for Gatekeeper, number of records on the vertical axis and the segment numbers on the x axis. A different coloured line for each year. This description applies to the other three charts as well. All years are very similar in their numbers for each section. Sections 1 and 7 are clearly the best ones for this species

Chart for Ringlet The years 2022 and 2024 are similar to each other and higher than the other records for the other two years. This is most obvious in section 7. The other feature is that Ringlet were recorded in every section (except section 6) and I this did not happen in the other three years. It will be interesting to see whether this occurs in 2025.

Chart for Speckled Wood All years are very similar in their numbers for each section. Sections 1, 4 and 7 are clearly the best ones for this species

Chart for Meadow Brown. All years are similar in their numbers for each section with 2024 showing a higher number of recordings in three out of the four sections. It appears as though is is another species that was not affected by the poor weather conditions in winter/spring of 2023/24 and during the summer months of 2024. It will be interesting to see whether they maintain their numbers in 2025.

Here are four more charts each showing an individual species and the number recorded per section for each of the years of our survey on the transect.

All are members of the Nymphalidae family and all show that they did not suffer on our site in 2024.

#ukbutterflies #butterflytransect

A data table showing each year of our transect and the number of Orange Tip butterflies seen each year. An accompanying line chart with an upward trend line. We only recorded 21 Orange Tips in 2024 but that’s good for our site and significantly higher than any of the other years

One of the butterfly species that bucked the trend on our transect in 2024 was the Orange Tip.

This data and chart show an upward trend. Would anyone care to speculate why this species did well? Did this happen for you as well?

#ukbutterflies #butterflytransect

Spreadsheet showing all the Cliffe species and the numbers seen in each section every year of the survey

My spreadsheet of all the transect data can give me this data as well, section by section comparisons. This is helpful in targeting conservation work for individual species

Screenshot of spreadsheet showing all 23 butterfly recorded on the site and the totals for four years (1995, and 2021 to 2024)

I record our survey results in a spreadsheet so that I can see statistics throughout the year.

Here is an extract from one of the summary tables.

Essex Skipper face on and with antennae raised so that the black tips are obvious, the key distinguishing feature that separates this butterfly from the Small Skipper

One evening towards the end of July this year this Essex Skipper was found on the Cliffe. If the team can find them next year during the UKBMS transect survey then it will be the first time it will have been recorded during the four years of records.

#ukbms #transect #butterflies

A little history about our transect. I was involved with conservation on the site and the Park Ranger asked if I and others would be interested in a butterfly transect.

I found others who wanted to be involved and there are now 8 of us, three couples and two individuals.

We started in 2021

The information board for the Cliffe in November snow

The open heathland showing clumps of Heather and encroaching birch trees

View from the sandstone ridge looking south east over snow drifts to the sunlit South Shropshire hills

View over farmland looking west to the snow covered Berwyn Mountains in North Wales

A good fall of snow over the last two days in North Shropshire but a beautiful afternoon so this was an opportunity to take some photos and show you what our site looks like