The appearance of a Clouded Yellow in his garden has just broken Brian’s previous record for the number of species there in a year. About a year ago, Brian wrote an article for our Dorset BC Newsletter covering the various species he has recorded in his Harman’s Cross garden and yesterday he sent us this photo telling us that his old record had just been broken:

We had a brief visit today to our garden in Harman’s Cross by a Clouded Yellow. It flew around the lawn a couple of times, settled briefly for a rather poor photo obscured by a plant stem, then flew off very quickly straight over the house to disappear, possibly heading for Ailwood Down to the north. It is the first Clouded Yellow we have seen in our garden this year, bringing our species total for this year in our garden to 28. This is one more than our previous highest count of 27 in 2019. It is also only the 2nd time we have seen a Clouded Yellow in our garden since moving here in 1984. The high count might of course be due to our being at home for most of this year, so we have been able to check our garden species more often.

The county of Dorset is fortunate to be home to around 45 of the 59 species of butterflies that can be found in the UK and Brian has recorded 28 of them in his own garden – a remarkable total bearing in mind the very different and wide-ranging habitat and breeding requirements of the various species.