The Big Butterfly count is running now and if anyone picks this up at home it is a great activity taking just 15 minutes at some time before August 7th.
All anyone has to do is count butterflies for 15 minutes on a sunny day where there is plenty of vegetation to attract them. These few weeks now are the time in the butterfly life cycle that they are most likely to be spotted, you don’t even have to leave a garden to do it but 15 minutes in a park or flowery area will do just fine if you don’t have a garden.
Download the identification chart to help you work out which butterflies you have seen, sign up at https://bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org/signup and go to the interactive map to add a count.
There is also an app that will help to identify butterflies for The Big Butterfly count “iRecord Butterflies is a free app that will guide you through the identification of any butterfly that you see in the UK and allow you to add your sighting to millions of other valuable records that inform the work of Butterfly Conservation.”
Get iRecord Butterflies from iTunes
Get iRecord Butterflies from Google Store
The Big Butterfly count is something we could all do over the next few days and children love learning the names of the butterflies that they can identify.
“Butterfly declines are also an early warning for other wildlife losses. Butterflies are key biodiversity indicators for scientists as they react very quickly to changes in their environment. Therefore, if their numbers are falling, then nature is in trouble. So tracking numbers of butterflies is crucial in the fight to conserve our natural world.”
