Rare egg hunt finds record number of butterflies

Record numbers of rare butterfly eggs have been discovered after landowners let their hedgerows grow wild.

Once common across the UK, the brown hairstreak had seen numbers fall significantly.

But the butterfly has received a major population boost in Carmarthenshire after hedgerows were protected from annual "flailing" cuts that destroyed a key habitat for them, the Butterfly Conservation said.

The charity hopes to encourage more landowners to try "cutting back on their cutting back" to help a host of wildlife including butterflies, moths, dormice and birds.

It said the brown hairstreak butterfly was present in most of the Tywi valley as recently as 2010 but disappeared almost entirely in the following decade.

The Butterfly Conservation's south Wales branch believes that was caused by an increase in annual mechanical flailing of hedgerows and scrubby areas which destroys blackthorn shoots - the only place the butterflies lay their eggs.

The National Trust and the South Wales Trunk Road Agent have reduced the amount they cut back their hedgerows, protecting their sites from annual flailing, while planting more blackthorns.

As a result, volunteers who search for the tiny white butterfly eggs in the area every December and January have clocked up record tallies this winter.

Richard Smith, who has volunteered with the Butterfly Conservation's south Wales branch for more than 30 years, said: "The volunteer team are really excited to find that, after a decade of heartache for brown hairstreaks in Carmarthenshire's Tywi valley, there is at last signs of an upturn."

While the sites protected from annual flailing have seen a 50% increase in eggs this winter, another group of fields nearby which were unmanaged for four years have now been "severely flailed", with a drop of 60 eggs found a year to just four, according to Smith.

Dan Hoare, director of nature recovery at the Butterfly Conservation, said: "We don't want to stop anyone managing their hedgerows, but we would love more landowners to try cutting back on their cutting back.

"If hedgerows are only trimmed once every two years, or even every three years, it could make an enormous difference to the survival of the brown hairstreak and help many other species as well.

"The lovely brown hairstreak is an indicator of getting that balance right."