It would be wrong to infer that the Painted Lady was Britain's commonest butterfly.
In July 2019, during the build–up to the count, the BBC reported that "unusually high numbers of the painted lady butterfly had been spotted flying from Europe to the UK. They usually fly to Britain in the summer, but every 10 years millions arrive in a mass migration."
The counting period for the 2019 Big Butterfly Count was 19 July to 11 August. The Painted Lady did indeed come out on top, with 420,841 sightings (almost 30 times as many as in 2018!). The rest of the Top Ten was made up by the Peacock (207,814), Small White (179,715), Gatekeeper (161,987), Large White (138,671), Meadow Brown (110,858), Red Admiral (91,146), Small Tortoiseshell (70,704), Speckled Wood (33,015) and Green–veined White (32,965).
In 2018, the Painted Lady was 13th on the list (as Warwick Davis might say) with 14,193 sightings. The top three were the Small White (273,650), Large White (210,665) and Gatekeeper (72,877).
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2019