The Purple Emperor is now at peak at Knepp.
Today, I walked the Knepp PE transect. This runs down 2km of oak-lined green lane and takes around 2 hrs 30 mins to walk. Weather conditions were Good, with Emperors nicely active (a wind sprung up towards the end - Knepp is a surprisingly windy place).
I totalled 38, including 5 females.
That's about par, suggesting that the butterfly is in average numbers at Knepp this year (though way down on last year's stupendous showing, which produced a record individual transect count of 80!).
However, if another extreme heatwave comes over, they'll shoot over early (as happened last year, and in 1976) - in which case this year will become a below average year...
At last, some of Knepp's oaks are producing sap runs. Both males and female cluster around these 'feeder trees', which means they tend to disappear elsewhere.
Here's some feeder tree action from 2025 -
No comments:
Post a Comment