There are always winners and losers I suppose. Several butterfly species have declined with the demise of coppicing but it is thought this may have actually benefited the speckled wood. The speckled wood is a woodland species first and foremost and is quite happy in shade where most other butterflies prefer not to venture for too long. As a result of this shade tolerance they have done well in overgrown coppices; this has led them to spread out along hedgerows and even into gardens and parks. I was also surprised to learn that they do better in cooler, wetter summers and the recent generally poor years for many butterflies may well have benefited the speckled wood. It is now certainly one of our most common species in Dorset although many people may have never heard of it!
The speckled wood can have up to three overlapping broods a year and so can be seen almost continuously from late March to early November. The Nature of Dorset database has fifty nine records for 2017 and 2018 combined and these show a general emergence from week 12 onwards which is late March. There is a peak in week 16 at the end of April before the reports level out and continue right through until week 45 at the end of October. Whether that peak in week 16 means this is a time when there are most speckled woods about or whether it means that people are reporting their first of the year and then not reporting them thereafter as they are common I am not sure but I suspect it is the latter of the two scenarios.
There are reports from a large number of sites across the county and the distribution map shows just how widespread they are. The gaps across the centre of the county will be partly down to lack of observer coverage but could also reflect the lack of woodland across the chalk spine of the county.
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