Kaisermantel butterfly tops Austria’s annual count
Monday 24th August 2026 on 13:30 in
Austria
The Kaisermantel was the most frequently reported butterfly during Austria’s annual count, with 1,981 sightings among 17,456 reports, ORF reported on Monday. More than 1,000 people took part in this year’s count.
Participants observed butterflies for 15 minutes at a sunny location between July 20 and August 9 and recorded their findings using the Butterflies of Austria app.
The ten most frequently reported species
The Kaisermantel led the list with 1,981 reports, followed by the large meadow brown with 1,723, the Russian bear with 1,423, the small cabbage white with 1,149 and the common blue with 1,127.
The painted lady was reported 518 times, the small heath 465 times, the red admiral 456 times, the gray-banded grayling 416 times and the hummingbird hawk-moth 330 times.
Admirals and hummingbird hawk-moths benefit from milder winters, which make it easier for them to overwinter in the Alps. Both species are generally more common in July and August, said Peter Huemer, a butterfly expert at the Tyrolean State Museums.
This is particularly true of the Kaisermantel, he said. It is a typical midsummer species with only one generation each year, making it especially common at this time.
Citizen science project has recorded 1.2 million sightings
The Butterflies of Austria project has brought citizen scientists together since 2016 and recorded more than 1.2 million butterfly sightings. With more than 31,000 app users, it is one of Europe’s largest platforms of its kind.
The data help document butterfly distribution and are valuable for research, said Michael Jungmeier, holder of the UNESCO Chair in Protected Area Management at Carinthia University of Applied Sciences and a board member of Blühendes Österreich.
Data collected through the app are anonymised and passed via the Tyrolean State Museums to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the world’s largest biodiversity database. They are also used to compile Austria’s Red Lists.
A scientific analysis of the 2025 reports showed the value of the data. That year, 137,722 reports were submitted, covering 181 butterfly species. The peacock butterfly was the most frequently reported species.