Meadow Brown Small Brown Butterfly Uk | Slide Mouse

The meadow brown is mainly brown with washed out orange patches on the forewings.

Meadow brown small brown butterfly uk. It lives in discrete colonies and adults rarely venture far from the colony. Butterflies emerge from late may and can still be seen as late as october. The best way to identify the brown butterflies is by looking at the eyespots on their wings. This is the most abundant species in many habitats with hundreds together at some areas.

If you can see a white fringe to the wing as it flies it is a ringlet. If you can see even a small amount of orange in flight your butterfly is the meadow brown. The gatekeeper and meadow brown are common throughout the new forest but the ringlet is scarcer. The larval foodplants are a wide variety of grasses such as fescues meadow grass couch cock s foot and false broom.

This is a highly variable species with four named subspecies found in the british isles although the differences between them are often subtle. All rights reserved. Meadow brown butterfly egg and life cycle. This was followed by the meadow brown 331 large white 220 and small white 157.

Widespread and common throughout britain and ireland. Ringlets have a number of prominent rings on the underwings not found on the meadow brown. Ringlets are usually a darker brown than the meadow brown and lack the single eyespot. The meadow brown is one of our commonest and most widespread butterflies and a familiar sight throughout the summer months.

This bucked the national trend putting the typical hedge and meadow species of gatekeeper and meadow brown above the whites. The meadow brown is the most abundant butterfly species in many habitats. This is a widespread butterfly and can be found over most of the british isles with the exception of orkney and shetland and mountainous regions. These three species are all very common and widespread in hampshire and the rest of southern uk.

The most numerous butterfly species in the sid valley is the gatekeeper with 412 sightings. Adults fly even in dull weather when most other butterflies are inactive. The gatekeeper is generally smaller and more orange with a row of tiny white dots on the hind underwings. The combination of its relatively large size orange patches on the forewings only one eyespot on the forewing and none at all on the hindwings is unique to the meadow.

2020 bromley parks. This species can be found in all parts of the british isles with the exception of the most mountainous regions and shetland.