In Photos: Big Butterfly Count 2018

‘The sun was low and I was lazily clicking away with my camera in the garden in Putney, London, when a cabbage white butterfly flew in and headed straight for this horseradish. The light caught them both at the right moment.’ Cabbage whites – a catch-all term for large white and small white butterflies – are often described as the bane of an allotment holder’s life.

Photograph: Stewart Cowley/GuardianWitness

‘Small white on a nasturtium leaf near my house in Dinton, Buckinghamshire.’

Photograph: Elaine Stavert/GuardianWitness

‘Common blue in my Taunton garden.’ This is a male, which Butterfly Conservation says is the slightly more conspicuous sex, but the hue giving the species its name is more visible on the upper wings.

Photograph: Mary Chaloner