Not quite sure how this started, but we seem to have accidentally found ourselves on the path of “bagging” all the British resident butterfly species. Photographically of course not literally! We were regularly getting the common ones in the garden anyway, but I think it might have been The Big Butterfly Count that piqued our interest in seeing more. Looking at the result map for this we could see other people had recorded species we’d never seen in places not far from us at all. (Lepidopteran envy is a terrible thing!) So we started going out looking for them and before I knew it, I’d got a spreadsheet and was ticking them off one by one! The Butterflies of the West Midlands Book (a fantastic book by the way for anyone into their butterflies round here) spurred us on further. So to date we’ve bagged 55 species out of about 58 possible targets. The final target figure is a bit vague depending on what you count as a resident species, but we’re definitely nearing the finish.

I thought I’d  pull together our best photos of each of the butterflies we’ve seen so far (I use the word best in a very loose sense as a couple of the photos are pretty rubbish!). So in no particular order here are the ones we’ve seen as of June 2022:

Swallowtail

Duke of Burgundy

Wall

Peacock

Red Admiral

White Admiral

Small Tortoiseshell

Painted Lady

Comma

Holly Blue

Common Blue

Silver-studded Blue

Chalkhill Blue

Small Blue

Large Blue

Adonis Blue

Brown Argus

Northern Brown Argus

Small Copper

Small Skipper

Essex Skipper

Large Skipper

Silver-spotted Skipper

Dingy Skipper

Grizzled Skipper

Small White

Large White

Green-veined White

Orange Tip

Brimstone

Marbled White

Wood White

Clouded Yellow

Speckled Wood

Gatekeeper

Meadow Brown

Ringlet

Mountain Ringlet

Small Heath

Large Heath

Grayling

Green Hairstreak

Brown Hairstreak

Purple Hairstreak

White Letter Hairstreak

Black Hairstreak

Heath Fritillary

Marsh Fritillary

Silver-washed Fritillary

Dark Green Fritillary

High Brown Fritillary

Pearl Bordered Fritillary

Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary

Glanville Fritillary

Purple Emperor