It’s good news for the environment.
There are loads of reasons to love butterflies. Like bees, they’re pollinators, and they also act as a natural form of pest control. Plus, they provide food for birds and other creatures that we need in our environment, and they’re beautiful. So, it’s important that we look after butterfly populations, just as we look after bee populations here in the Netherlands, and it seems that this year we have far more butterflies than usual!
A boom in butterflies has been observed in the Netherlands since mid-July, according to Naturetoday.com, and it’s because of the weather. Spring wasn’t so great for the butterflies, and we all know how wet it was, with non-stop rain and grey skies. However, the humidity in Spring and in early July combined with the hotter weather we’ve been seeing recently has been perfect for butterflies hatching from their cocoons.
There are more and more butterflies around, according to those who count them to monitor the populations in different parts of the Netherlands. If this butterfly-counting sounds like fun to you, you can get involved by counting the butterflies in your garden and passing the numbers on via the website. Right now there are plenty of species to spot around Amsterdam, such as the Atalanta, a species that is hatching en masse at the moment.