Common Butterflies

These pages show the commonest butterflies recorded in Yorkshire.  The photos are not intended to be used for identification purposes, but may be helpful in deciding where to start looking in your favourite butterfly book (eg 'Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland' by Lewington).

Click on any of the photos (on the page for a particular month) to see larger versions.  You will probably want to take a look at the Butterfly Conservation website and also the Yorkshire branch of Butterfly Conservation (see the 'Galleries' section) for photos of butterflies which are not shown here (and more photos of the ones which are).

If you have better photos of any of the butterflies on these pages, and are happy for them to be used here, then please email them to info@scarboroughwildlife.org.uk .  Remember that photos should show the main features used in identifying the butterfly and be of a 'standard' specimen rather than an unusual form.

If you intend to start recording butterflies, it would be a good idea to join Butterfly Conservation and/or the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union (YNU) so that you will receive a copy of the annual 'Yorkshire Lepidoptera report' (this covers the moths and butterflies recorded across the county in the previous year).  You should send your records to the appropriate recorder (see Yorkshire Butterflies list of recorders for details).

The statistics were calculated based on the details published in the annual reports from the Yorkshire branch of Butterfly Conservation for the five year span from 2002 to 2006 (inclusive).  These started out as editions of the Argus magazine, but since 2005 they have become part of the excellent Yorkshire Lepidoptera report which is produced in conjunction with the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union (YNU).  Not all the included species had a full five years of data available (eg Dark Green Fritillary statistics only appeared in the last two reports), so an average figure was used for the number of sightings for a species in a given month.  Some species (eg Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary) don't appear at all, because the statistics were not available - luckily, none of the commoner species are missing, so the 'league tables' shouldn't be affected too much.  Remember that these figures are for the whole of Yorkshire, so don't be too surprised if you don't see a Gatekeeper in Scarborough, despite it being the third most common butterfly in July.

Back issues of Argus and the Yorkshire Lepidoptera report can be found on the Yorkshire branch's Publications web page, which is also where you should look if you would like to purchase the excellent book which they produced - 'The Butterflies of Yorkshire'.  You can read more about the book on our own Butterflies of Yorkshire web page.

Page numbers are shown for the book 'Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland' (by Lewington) as 'Pocket Guide: Pnn', where nnn' is the page number in that book.  The text that says 'BC webpage' is a link that will open the page on the Butterfly Conservation website for that particular species - click the link to view the page. The 'Distribution map' link opens the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) page for the species.

Click on the name of the month to view the page, although be aware that they contain quite a lot of photos and may take some time to download fully on a slow internet connection - 

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December