On a very hot Thursday I made my annual pilgrimage to the Aberbargoed Grasslands National Nature Reserve to pay homage to these magnificent butterflies, the Small pearl-bordered fritillaries (SPBFs).

At first I thought I was going to be disappointed, as I headed to the field where I’d found them in 2022 and saw none. In fact, numbers of all butterflies were low – not as many Small heaths as in previous years, a couple of tatty Dingy skippers, a few Large skippers, a fly-past of a Red admiral, a single Speckled wood, and one very worn Marsh fritillary.

As I was retracing my steps to check the adjacent, much larger field, I bumped into two Rangers and we chatted butterflies. One said he’d only seen low numbers this year, and assumed our very wet Spring followed by the current very hot dry period was the cause of the decline in numbers. But they had just seen one SPBF in the big field so I was a little more hopeful.

And, as you can see, I was lucky! I’m not sure why numbers rise and fall in different areas of the reserve from one year to the next (particularly as the large field suffered a serious fire in 2022) but, turns out, this year the SPBFs were mostly concentrated in the centre of that large field, where I was fortunate to see at least six, possibly more, of these gliding orange beauties!