Our Butterfly Count

The Big Butterfly Count asks us to sit for fifteen minutes in a day and count the number of each species of butterfly we see but here, with so few around, the biggest count has been of two butterflies, and on two days we saw none. So, just as an experiment, we decided to count how many we saw on a walk, one of our favourite walks up the glen of the Golspie Burn and then round through Backies. It's a good walk for the experiment, as it took us through a great variety of habitats including bracken-invaded fields, along field margins, and through both thick pine forestry and the mixed forestry....

....of the lower glen, the last with plenty of open, sunny glades. The weather helped, giving us cloudy moments but also plenty of sun.

We walked eight kilometres in two hours and, including....

....the very pretty small tortoiseshell which now seems to be resident on our garden's verbena, we saw 42 butterflies. Eight were whites of some sort, the rest were ringlets, speckled woods or meadow browns. Statistically, we therefore saw 5.25 butterflies per kilometre or, another way, 0.35 butterflies per minute.

I'm not sure that this is of the slightest use but seeing plenty of butterflies cheered us up no end; and it was a lovely walk.