The Big Butterfly Count is back
Be a citizen scientist! Take part in Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count!
Butterfly Conservation need as many of us as possible to take part in the Big Butterfly Count! It’s a UK wide survey and it helps the charity Butterfly Conservation to assess the health of our environment – just by counting butterflies!
The Count was launched in 2010 and it’s now the biggest survey of butterflies in the world! Imagine telling people you took part in it!
Butterflies are a really vital part of the ecosystem as pollinators and compotents of our food chain – but they are under threat and their numbers (with moths) have decreased hugely since the 1970s. They react rapidly to changes in the environment – so if their numbers are falling, that’s an indicator that nature is in trouble.
By taking part in the world’s largest butterfly survey, you’ll be helping both butterflies and the wider environment and biodiversity.
Surveys like this matter because they help scientists spot trends – and these trends can help charities such as Butterfly Conservation work out how to protect butterflies from extinction. It also helps further our understanding of the impact climate change has on wildlife.
How to Big Butterfly Count!
The Count starts on the 17th July and runs through to the 9th August 2026
Spend just 15 minutes identifying the butterflies you see, preferably in bright sunny weather! There’s a chart you can use to identify the butterflies you see – we see quite a few Red Admirals and White Cabbage butterflies in our garden. You can be in parks, school grounds, gardens, fields and forests. Butterfly Conservation has more information about how to count butterflies e.g. do you count each one or one species, so please read that first. Even if you don’t see any butterflies, that’s important for Butterfly Conservation to know.
And then Add your counts on the website or via the app. There’s a FREE Big Butterfly Count App you can download so that you can do and submit your Count in one go – it’s available for iOS and Android.
The top butterflies recorded in past years were:
2025: Large White took top place
2024: This year saw a majority of Gatekeeper and Meadow Browns
2023: This was a good year for the Red Admiral.
Doing the Big Butterfly Count is a great way to find out more about our fluttering friends and it would also be a lovely family activity.
Donate to Butterfly Conservation to support their work
Submit a sighting - help with the monitoring and recording schemes
Attend an event
Become a member
Speak up for butterflies and moths
This is now a huge event, inviting individuals and organisations around the world to take part in documenting moth species! Contribute moth sightings, photos and observations.
Fly off to find out more here.
Find out about helping moths with Butterfly Conservation.
Did you know there are over 2,500 species in Britain?
Garden for moths!
Thank you to David Duarte on Unsplash for the beautiful photo at the top of this blog.
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