How to keep a record of your local butterflies
Take photos, get them identified, then start counting!
Nowadays people are placing increasing value on their natural surroundings and how they provide multiple benefits in the form of health, sustainable living, and well-being in general. Wildlife holidays are becoming more popular all the time. However, we are beginning to realize that we don’t have to venture further than our backyards to appreciate nature. We grow indigenous plants in our gardens. We support our local conservancies to develop parks, roadsides, and riversides to act as refuges and corridors for wildlife. This is particularly so in my home city of Durban where organisations like Kloof Conservancy are working hard to support municipal efforts to protect and promote biodiversity, like the D’MOSS (Durban Municipal Open Spaces System).
Birdwatching has become enormously popular in recent years. A community of guides, bird clubs, and equipment vendors to supply aids like cameras and binoculars has developed.
Birds are a great way to see how successful attempts to reinvigorate local biodiversity have been. They are what is called an ‘indicator group’; a healthy bird population is a good sign that the local ecosystems are in good health. But of course, birds are not the only indicators of healthy ecosystems and biodiversity. In ecological terms they are mostly primary or secondary consumers of the primary producers of biodiversity – plants. They have the advantage of being attractive and conspicuous, which makes them effective indicators. There is another group of organisms that are popular with the public and are good indicators of ecological health – butterflies. They are smaller than birds and present challenges to those who would study them. But…
Photographing butterflies and getting them identified is easier than ever. A computer and a modern smartphone are usually enough; you do not need an expensive mirrorless or DSLR camera, although one can help with close-up shots.
A guidebook such as the Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa, or an app such as Woodhall’s Butterflies of South Africa, can help you identify the species and understand where it fits within the butterfly families. These resources should help you make a reasonable identification, but it is useful to have a way to confirm it. iNaturalist is one of the best platforms for confirming butterfly identifications.
iNaturalist has great information on how to register and upload your photos. It makes identification quicker if you have a reasonable idea of what you saw, because it has a great community of identifiers who will find your pictures more easily if you tagged them with an identification. You can also tag me, @stevewoodhall, and I will get a notification that you need some help or a confirmation of an identification.
iNaturalist has over the years built a massive database of all living things on Earth, South Africa included. At the time of writing this (late June 2026) South Africa had over 7 million records of which over 150 000 are butterflies.