Chasing Butterflies While the World Burns

There’s been a lot of bad news lately, but this was the week I’d signed up to chase butterflies.

A few years ago I heard about a citizen science project called the Irish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme organised by the National Biodiversity Data Centre. (“Scheme” means “project” not something nefarious.)

The first thing I learned about Irish butterflies is that there are only 33 different species. All of them are gorgeous.

For instance, here’s the Common Blue perched on its food, the bird’s foot trefoil. 

Another common species around here is the meadow brown. 

A few species are spectacular, like the peacock and the tortoise shell.

 

You often see one called a “ringlet” which has a jaunty flying style.

At this time of year there are a few white ones, most of them the “Green Veined White.”

The surveys are quite organised and I’m part of a small group of dedicated nature-lovers who walk a set path called a “transect” again and again several weeks over the summer, recording the day, time, wind, and amount of sunshine.

The transect we walk is located in one of my favorite places near us, Lurgabrack, although most people call it “Tramore.” A few days ago, it was my turn to do a survey. Luckily it came after a spell of rainless and hot days—over 80 degrees!

All the butterfly species of Ireland fit into a handy laminated card you can buy for €5.

You need at least two people, one recording and the rest scouting both sides of the path shouting out, “Meadow Brown!” “Green-Veined White!” “Meadow Brown!” “OOOO I think it’s a Peacock!”

Only rarely do they rest on a flower long enough to bring up your binocs and get a good look. And then the group falls silent except for sighs and sounds of appreciation of their fragile beauty.

Here’s a Silver-Washed Fritillery.

Getting a photograph is hopeless unless you have the right gear. I saw all the butterflies in this post on the survey, but the photos are from the Irish Butterflies website.

As we walked the transect, I kept the tally, while my companion and I scanned side to side. We saw 88 Meadow Browns, 25 Green-Veined Whites, 16 Ringlets, four Peacocks (three together) and two Silver-Washed Fritilleries.

When I got home, I transferred the tallies onto a data sheet, then logged in to a website and added our survey to the national database. Thus I joined our Irish data with that collected by other citizen scientists walking 6,200 other transects across 15 countries.

Biodiversity Ireland tells us that these annual surveys confirm what we feared, that humans are killing the butterflies too. Maybe we’re just counting down to zero.

But I don’t care about that, because when I drove home the local radio station played a song from the 1940s: “Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink. Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.”