2020 has had the highest number of Butterfly records we have ever seen – the total being just under 70,000 from 4011 recorders.  This may be as a result of the Coronavirus lock down.  There are 4 main recording systems: UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: The Big Butterfly Count:  The Garden Butterfly Count:  Casual Recording on iRecord .  We analyse the records by the old vice counties in the West Midlands: Hereford, Worcester, Shropshire, Staffordshire.

The top recorded species of butterflies in 2020 is shown on the bar chart below. The highest  recorded butterflies were Small and Large White, Peacock and Meadow Brown.  Of course this does not mean that these are the commonest species, we need the look to the UKBMS analysis to tell us population trends.  To enable an atlas to be produced  we need to analyse the species in 10 km squares.  The atlas produced covers the  last 5 years and we have a good coverage of all the squares in the West Midlands.  The most recorded squares are shown in the bar chart below.  The top square is North Malvern with almost 6000 records.  On the other hand 2 poorly covered squares are SO69 – 67 records with only 15 species and SJ 81 with 126 records and 16 Species. 

What do we get from these data, 5 Years atlas by 10km and 5 km squares for each species:

For all the BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) species we have a Google map showing the location of all records on aerial maps.  

From the UKMBS Transect we are able to get 5 Year population Trends.  2020 data were difficult to analyse.  Whilst there were 60 Transects walked some of the early weeks were missed due to Coronavirus lock down.

However species trends have been added  to the website for all species 

All these results are published on the website https://wmbutterflies.wordpress.com/