The darker colours of the Speckled Wood butterfly absorb solar energy quicker than brighter colours
Nature on our doorsteps: Early summer butterflies
Rosaleen Dwyer is the County Heritage Officer at South Dublin County Council – every week she gives us an insight into the natural heritage around us and the beautiful biodiversity of the plants and creatures.
The recent lovely warm weather lifted the spirits of many people.
It also greatly benefited our late spring and early summer butterflies by getting the season off to a good start for them.
Humans are warm-blooded and can generate heat in their bodies from the breakdown of their food.
Butterflies are cold-blooded insects and cannot regulate their internal temperature. Instead, they need to draw heat from an external source, like the sun.
A butterfly’s wing muscles need to be warm before it can fly off and search for food and find a mate.
They absorb this heat from the sun.
Their wings act like mini solar panels, absorbing solar energy and converting it to heat energy which warms the muscles at the base of the butterfly’s wings. This allows the wings to flap.
In cool and overcast conditions, this warming-up process takes much longer.
This is why butterflies are not very active in dull weather.
In early summer, Holly Blue butterflies will be attracted to nectar-rich garden flowers like Forget-me-not
In Ireland, the months of April and May are never guaranteed to deliver a lot of bright sunshine, so the recent sunny weather offered a really great boost to butterflies.
Getting a good start to the season is important because, for many butterflies, their life span is short.
Having bright sunny weather allows them to be active for longer periods during the day.
This increases their chances of finding a mate and laying eggs for the next generation.
Dull and cool weather reduces their chances of being active enough to find a mate in time before the season, and their life span, ends.
Flowers also need good sunshine to produce a lot of nectar and attract insects.
We can help butterflies and pollinating insects by growing a lot of different nectar-rich flowers in our gardens and parks.
We also need to offer safe resting places for insects, by retaining hedgerows and growing shrubs, by leaving some areas of grass to grow long, by not tidying the garden too much, and by avoiding the use of chemicals in the garden.
