Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme

The Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme generates important data on what butterflies regularly occur in gardens, how this varies regionally across Ireland and tracks how butterfly populations are doing from year to year.

The Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme seeks to determining how important gardens are for butterflies and to track population change in our commonest species. The scheme requires surveyors to register their garden with the Data Centre then to make regular 15-mintue counts of the butterflies seen in the garden, on at least a weekly basis from 1st April to 30th September each year. The scheme was established in May 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown, and has now been established as a full monitoring scheme of the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

What does monitoring involve?

The Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme asks volunteers to make a count of the maximum number of each butterfly species seen in their garden during a 15-minute period, during fine weather conditions. Surveyors can choose to count from a fixed point or from a walk around the garden, but the same method must be used each time for the count to ensure consistency of effort between counts. Ideally surveyors are encouraged to make at least one monitoring count each week but more frequent count can also be made.

If you would like to participate in this monitoring scheme please email butterflies@biodiversityireland.ie where help will be provided to register your garden on our system to get you started.

Peacock (Inachis io) – Liam Lysaght

Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: an eCourse

The  Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme deals with only 21 butterfly species that are likely to be found visiting gardens. The National Biodiversity Data Centre has developed an eCourse to enable surveyors to become familiar with the identification features of these 21 species. This makes this recording scheme very accessible for those who want to get involved in butterfly monitoring.

The content of the eCourse covers:

  1. How to identify the 21 garden butterfly species
  2. The methods for the Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme
  3. How to register your garden on the National Sampling Framework (video tutorial)
  4. How to submit your data (video tutorial)
  5. Butterfly identification support

About the Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme

The Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme was launched on a pilot basis in 2020 to test the methodology and gain feedback from recorders. The pilot demonstrated that the monitoring scheme was valuable and could generate important data on butterflies to complement the other butterfly monitoring schemes operated by the National Biodiversity Data Centre. Consequently the Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme was launched as a full monitoring scheme in April 2021. A copy of the 2022 Annual Report can be downloaded from the link below.  Real time progress with the butterfly counts completed for the monitoring scheme in 2023 are shown on the charts and graphs below .

Species composition of butterflies

Number of butterflies

Participating gardens

Number of counts per month

Number of butterflies observed per month

National Sampling Framework

The National Sampling Framework is a system used for managing for large scale citizen science programs, including the Garden Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. This framework is underpinned by a bioclimatic map this means we can relate the climate to the distribution of species.

Contact Us

Should you wish to provide feedback please send observations to butterflies@biodiversityireland.ie