Lack of butterflies???

[Pickle]

Is it just me or does there seem to be a lack of butterflies this year? All the Budleias around here are in full bloom and yet I have so far only seen one butterfly on one of the 3 budleias I have in my garden. When we moved in here over 3 years ago my Budleias were literally alive with activity from bees and butterflies but this year and from what I can remember of last year they have barely had anything on them.
This year I've tried to widen the variety of butterfly and bee friendly plants in my garden and yet there still seems to be very little life out there.

Is anyone else finding the same thing?

[Hillwalker]

There are quite a few up this neck of the woods.

[endymion]

There were a few Brimstone and either Common or Holly Blue earlier in the year, but almost none since. I did see a Comma the other day though, so maybe they'll be along soon. Hope so.

Our buddleia is empty too, even next door's bees don't seem interested. They don't seem much interested in anything this year.

[WrexTheDragon]

We do regular weekly butterfly counts every year and they are down this year on previous ones.

The main problem in my area is that we get a couple of nice warm days followed by a week of cold ones and this must confuse the butterflies.

Only Meadow browns and Ringlet around, the Skippers only laster for a few days last week.

[Two_Sheds]

The Times wildlife column says it's just about now that the butterflies appear ~ these are the offspring of any butterflies that survived last winter.

Red Admirals, Small Tortoiseshell etc should be appearing any day now

(we are down on Cabbage Whites, thank goodness, but I expect they'll catch up)

[pauco]

Not even a Cabbage White this year Never known such a bad year.

paul.

[rustylady]

Went lottie this afternoon and saw quite a few cabbage whites. First time this year really, apart from an odd one.

[Dynamo]

A lack of cabbage whites suits me. I would like to see other types that don't hurt my crops though. I reckon the lack of butterflies this summer is due to the very harsh winter that we had.