Missing butterflies??

[Colarris]

I live in London and I've hardly seen any butterflies this year, not even the most common ones. Whats happened to them??

[Deb London]

Where and when have you been looking?

I get the impression that many species peaked early. But there were loads of Orange Tips a few weeks back. I even had a few fly into my garden.

[tameblackbirds]

June is a quiet month for butterflies as the early spring have laid eggs and expired for the most part, The caterpillars will begin to emerge and new butterflies will emerge towards the end of the month

[Hobjob]

Originally Posted by Deb London

Where and when have you been looking?

I get the impression that many species peaked early. But there were loads of Orange Tips a few weeks back. I even had a few fly into my garden.

Running 2-3 weeks early in Suffolk.
Our silver studded blue count has been brought forward two weeks!

[INHT]

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's concerned. I live on the island of islay in the Inner Hebrides and we had the best count of Orange-tips probably ever in April (we hardly ever get this species here). We were all excited about it being a good year for butterflies and then we had a terrible storm in mid May - one of the worst to hit the island in many years. The trees have been burnt by the sea salt and wind and since then we've hardly seen any butterflies. I saw my first Marsh Fritillary yesterday and was relieved. Islay is one of the hot spots for this butterfly and it's normally on the wing late May/early June so it's getting a bit late.

[Arjaydee]

I am a little concerned as I usually have masses of butterflies in the garden. Unfortunately a Hece that was a prolific flowerer died in the bad winter and I assumed this was the problem. I also had large numbers of orange tipped earlier in the year