As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, A bumper day, part 1, last Thursday proved to be a brilliant day for wildlife sightings, in particular for my first 2026 sightings of several flying creatures. These included this beautiful Small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae), which was a particularly exciting find as, sadly, these butterflies are quite a rarity nowadays in my area and, indeed, throughout Wales. The 2025 UKBMS (United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme) report shows a 62% decrease in reported sightings of this species at the monitoring sites in Wales in the 10 years prior to 2025. In England, the statistics are even worse, with a 78% decrease in the previous 10 years’ sightings, and an even more alarming 88% decrease in sightings in the 50 years from 1976. You can perhaps understand why I was so excited to see this particular butterfly.

I had already seen my first Red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) of the year before last Thursday’s walk, but that had been a fleeting glimpse of a single, rather tatty looking creature, so it was nice to see this pristine specimen, likely a recent arrival on the strong southerly winds that have recently been blowing migrant Lepidoptera to the southern shores of Britain. There was one other new butterfly species seen during that bumper day of new sightings but it deserves its own blog post so will appear here tomorrow.