Compared to recent years, 2025 has been an exceptional year for butterflies.
We moved in to our new house in the Autumn of last year and after spending some time creating spaces for wildlife, I was pleased to count 14 differenst species visiting.
Locally there have been some great counts of common butterflies and Spurn has had its best ever year for number of species recorded.
I was hoping, however that given the fantastic conditions, there might be a showing from my favourite UK butterfly-the clouded yellow.
Clouded yellow don’t breed in the UK but are generally seen annually in select locations usually after favourable winds.
I’d heard of a few in East Yorkshire and last week got a tip off that a few were showing in a meadow in South Holderness.
I went last week in unfavourable conditions and managed to see one skulking in damp vegetation.The next time i went it was bright, hot and sunny. The buterflies in the meadow were like confetti at a wedding. Mainly large and small whites with green-veined mixed in. A closer look revealed common blue and small tortoiseshel with the odd, worn meadow brown.
And there, like turbo charged pac men a flurry of clouded yellows were bombing up and down.
A conservative count yielded 12 and despite numerous scans accross the meadow I couldnt get the count any higher.
But woe what a priveledge, an honour to see such a spectacle and because of all of the pressures our natural world is under, a spectacle I thought I would never see, at least in the UK.
Clouded yellows are the epitome of Summer, the Ladybird book What To Look For In Summer has an iconic image and description that takes me right back to the golden years of the seventies when I was just starting out on my natural world adventure. To see a clouded yellow then would have been almost mythical as my knowledge was only as limited to the common butterflies we saw in our garden and on our allotment.
Whilst I couldnt quite replicate the image, the feeling of travelling back in time was very real.
Seeing clouded yellows and all of the other butterflies at the weekend was more than just an observation. It was a journey back in time and for a few hours, all was well with the world.
