Thursday, April 24, 2008

Butterflies Again

It would be sheer dereliction of duty on my part if I didn't note this sad story. Last year was truly a shocker for us butterfly lovers, having started in such glorious style with a warm and sunny April and lots of early sightings - and then declined into that horrendously wet, cool summer (though, for myself, I did twice see a dozen or so of these beauties). Butterflies are so dependent on the weather (not the climate) - and in Britain we just get too much weather. The hot dry summer of 1976, which scorched the grass from public parks and withered trees where they stood, was a revelation, producing clouds of contented butterflies everywhere and affording us a tantalising glimpse of what our countryside might be like if only we could count on proper summers. I shall make no mention here of global warming. D'Oh!

2 comments:

  1. I don't know much about this, but I'm surprised you can't simply buy butterflies in garden centres. Or perhaps you can? I mean, buy some feed plants with caterpillars already on them that you stick into a flowerbed. Even if only a tiny number of these caterpillars became butterflies - probably the case in the wild, anyway - that would still mean more butterflies.

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  2. You're onto something there Mark - it would definitely work with some species, and look, you can get these, though oddly the caterpillars don't seem to have plants to eat but some kind of cake...

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