Status
.....The Gatekeeper has passed through over two decades
with wildly varying fortunes, including a three year low between 2006
and 2008, which most other Satyrinae also experienced. Whilst it is now
a very common and widespread butterfly of mature hedgerows, along
woodland rides and edges on a range of soils, it hasn't always been so.
This is another butterfly which in the early 1980's, was hard to find in
Nottinghamshire, but then underwent a considerable range expansion
during the 1990's. It is now found across the county and has a
distribution almost identical to that of the Meadow Brown.d |