Butterflies - where are they?

This might be off theme but just had to say we were surrounded with swooping swallows on the 12 fairway today it was wonderful. Only one butterfly though and no dragonflies/maidenflies on the ponds and lakes.

We saw butterflies near our gorgeous bright Crapes, early today.

Today bees were on this whatever it is (planted 60 yrs ago).

It's a plain tree, pretty now.

LilyBlue

I saw this recently near a canal in Yorkshire.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen one like it before.

Yes, I've seen moths like that but not so far this year.

There were just five bees on the lavender bushes this afternoon. Normally they are full of bees.

That is a Burnet moth rather than a butterfly. I do a weekly count for the Butterfly Conservation organisation on farmland now owned by the local Wildlife Trust. Only my second year so still learning about butterflies. I have been told that the cold spring has had an effect on numbers, but today in one hour I saw 513 butterflies.

I saw this recently near a canal in Yorkshire.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen one like it before.

They are here in Orkney! Unusually high temperatures have found our foliage festooned with small Whites and Blues, Red Admirals and the occasional Peacock. There are many bees of several varieties also with that familiar happy buzzing sound of my distant childhood memories. Our hitherto faithful mason wasps have not returned yet though...

VioletSky

I've released a few this year but not actually seen any

I might get more caterpillars

One crawled out of the loganberries - good job I didn't eat him.

I put him outside on a weed.

I've released a few this year but not actually seen any

I might get more caterpillars

Yes I ve got a lot too Redhead so maybe it’s just some areas that have nt

Well, so do I but they must have all flown away ☹
Perhaps your weeds are better than my weeds.

We must be very fortunate there are lots of butterflies and moths here. I encourage them with an abundance of flowers and shrubs and let wild flowers grow in veg patch.

DeeJaysMum

My beautiful Callistemon bush has also come into flower in the last few days, so I'm sure that will also be attracting the butterflies and bumblebees to my garden.

It's such a shame that the Callistemon only flowers for a few weeks once each year, mine is in my front garden and I get so many lovely comments about it when it's in flower.

I must try harder!
(That was often on my school report)

BlueBelle

Perhaps it depends what you are growing I ve been overrun with powder blues this year and lots of peacock butterflies and a lot of bees too but I m growing lots and lots of wild flowers and other stuff that they like and I don’t use pesticides
A lot of gardens are concreted over now or have that awful pretend grass

I've got a wild area and I can't say that the rest of the garden is immaculate either - definitely no fake grass here. In fact, I think the lawns have gone to weed as well!!

The bees enjoyed the raspberry and blackberry flowers but there really are so few insects around this year.
☹

Having said I'd hardly seen any, I've just had a beautiful marbled white sunning itself on the
lid of the recycling bin. Beautiful.

chicken I thought you were knowledgeable about butterflies,
I believed slippers🤣

It’s nothing to worry about so they say ( a guy on the radio!)
He said it’s just one of those years and many Summer insects are late.

Skippers, not slippers, Dratted auto correct. Although it does produce an intriguing mental picture!

I've seen hardly any of the larger type butterflies, not even cabbage whites, but there are lots of slippers fluttering around near ground level. We have lots of wild areas and flowering nettles, and did no mow May ( and most of June) so it's worrying. Mid Sussex here.

Perhaps it depends what you are growing I ve been overrun with powder blues this year and lots of peacock butterflies and a lot of bees too but I m growing lots and lots of wild flowers and other stuff that they like and I don’t use pesticides
A lot of gardens are concreted over now or have that awful pretend grass

Washerwoman

I've seen a few .A couple of tortoiseshell ,and some large whites and orange tips.But nothing like years ago when our gardens were full of them.
And not one ladybird.It's very worrying. My neighbour told me I should spray my honeysuckle and philadelphus the other day because they had black fly.She sprays anything that moves.I told her no way was I using pesticides and that maybe if they weren't used we'd actually get some ladybirds and other insects to do the job for us.I don't care if I annoyed her !

Gracious. I just spray water, vinegar, soda mix - no chemicals.

I've seen a few .A couple of tortoiseshell ,and some large whites and orange tips.But nothing like years ago when our gardens were full of them.
And not one ladybird.It's very worrying. My neighbour told me I should spray my honeysuckle and philadelphus the other day because they had black fly.She sprays anything that moves.I told her no way was I using pesticides and that maybe if they weren't used we'd actually get some ladybirds and other insects to do the job for us.I don't care if I annoyed her !

I used to worry about the number of bees on my lavender and cotoneaster flowers as children walked past them to school but I’ve just seen the odd bee now and then. A walk through fields used to send all sorts of insects rising but not this year and there’s not the same hum of insects.
It’s been a really good year for hawthorn blossom so it will be interesting to see whether there will be an abundance of haws or whether there was a lack of insect pollination.

Where I live, (south of Denmark) there are more butterflies than earlier.

I attribute this to the fact that a lot of people in our area are letting parts of their garden "go wild" to encourage insects to breed. Also most of the dangerous pesticides and weed-killers have been banned and can no longer be bought or used here,

It is nice to see that leaving swathes of grass to grow long instead of mowing every blade of the stuff, leaving dandelions and other "weeds" to grow and not cutting hedges until after they have finished flowering is seemingly reversing some of the damage our and our parents' generations have done (inadvertantly) to our environment.

I have not seen any butterflies this year despite planting plants to attract them.

Seen several bees and wasps and so far not one butterfly and we have buddlea in the garden, and no ladybirds