Hello and welcome to the first butterfly alert of 2018. It's never easy to know when to start these alerts: our first report was actually a Peacock on Jan 1st , but every time I was ready to send this out the temperature would plunge and it would start to snow. It's clearly going to be a very late spring - at this point last year we'd already had sixteen species reported, this year we've only had the five hibernators:
Peacock,
Small Tortoiseshell,
Red Admiral,
Comma
and Brimstone.
However it's forecast to be a good week weather wise and we should get Small White, Green-Veined White, Large White and possibly Orange Tip by next weekend (I rather fancy I'll get reports of some of these by return of email actually - the three whites are all reported from Suffolk already.)
Shortly afterwards we should see Holly Blue (likely to be a poor year for these I think) and Speckled Wood.(already out down south). Small Copper (ditto), Green Hairstreak, Small Heath. Then Grizzled and Dingy Skipper, Common Blue and Brown Argus. We have a field trip to Foulden Common on 15th May - hopefully the two skippers will be out by then!
As usual all reports gratefully received.(and many thanks to those who found all those species this week.)
Andy B