Volume 22 Issue 3, Fall 2017 by Anne Ellis For a human, the cool, almost autumnal weather of Saturday, August 5, was greeted with delight. The fresh wind and pleasant temperatures were a welcome relief from the typical heat and humidity of our summers. However, this did not bode well for the 21st Annual Butterfly Count. These winged […]

Loudoun County Butterfly Count Data 1997 through 2016 Click on the spreadsheet image below to see the year by year data: Data gathered through our Annual Butterfly Count is reported to the North American Butterfly Association for use in regional and national butterfly population studies. Join us for next year’s count and be a part of […]

By Nicole Hamilton As we headed into the 20th year of our butterfly count on August 6th, many of us wondered what our tally would be.  Springtime had been out of whack again.  Rains that we should have had in March and April came in May. It was warm then cool; the plants seem to […]

by Nicole Hamilton Our 2015 Butterfly count was another wonderful adventure! The weather was perfect, being in the high 70s to mid 80s, sunny with a light breeze, and with our team of count leaders we were able to field nine teams across our count circle. A total of 81 people came out for the […]

Our annual butterfly count was held on Saturday, August 3. Although the forecast called for nice weather, a storm front rolled in on the morning of the count. We were still hopeful we could get in a good count, but as our eight teams made up of 89 participants met at their designated starting points, […]

On Saturday, August 7, over 60 volunteers gathered into eight teams to count butterflies. This was our fourteenth annual butterfly count, and we were all geared up to watch for fluttering wings and flashes of color on a sunny day.  The butterfly count protocol is based on the same methodology used for the Christmas Bird […]

Our 12th Annual Butterfly Count was an amazing success! Going into the count, many of us felt as though butterfly numbers and species were down this year. The rains seemed to cause some plants to bloom later, such as the Joe Pye Weed. The butterflies seemed slow to show up in our gardens and there […]

The 2007 Butterfly Count was another success with 40 people participating, compared to 37 last year. This is the highest number of participants we have had in our 11 years of holding this count and it allowed us to expand to 6 teams so we could cover more territory.  August 6, 2007 proved to be […]

On August 5, the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy held its Tenth Annual Butterfly Count. The count is modeled after the Christmas Bird Count with a 7.5-mile count circle broken into sectors, with count teams assigned sectors in which to look for and identify butterflies, and data collected. We use the data locally to identify any trends […]