It's become traditional to post something like "End of Summer" at this time of year when frankly I'm prone to early Autumn depression after the the end of the cricket season, and butterfly and bee sightings also become an increasingly rare occurrence.
I've been trying to avoid taking constant repeat photos of the same species over the summer months. However this year I decided to reflect on which species have been the star features in my back garden and take photos of them before the buddleia flowers came to an inevitable end.
The overall winners were in no doubt. In joint first place came red admiral, considerably outnumbering other members of the Nymphalidae family. It was still being seen in good numbers on 16th September and the following couple of days before I went on on holiday on the 20th.
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| Red Admiral |
In equal first place, and the most numerous species overall was the large white, including a big number of males.
 | | Female Large White |
|  | | Male Large White |
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The male large white also carries the distinction of being the last butterfly to be seen, studiously visiting the last sprigs of buddleia on 29th September - shortly after which date a storm moved in and effectively called a halt to proceedings.
This meant that my annual ambition of seeing a butterfly on Buddleia after the start of October once again went unachieved this year. There's only one wee sprig left now. Ironically I have seen one more large white since - in Ashington Town Centre on 2nd October in decidedly overcast conditions.
Honourable mentions also go to small tortoiseshell, which proved to be a regular visitor once it got going at the beginning of August, and comma, which after an absence of about three weeks, turned up to surprise me by joining the admirals and tortoiseshells on the 16th.
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| Small Tortoiseshell |
Meanwhile tits and nuthatches continued to visit the sunflower hearts feeders if somewhat less regularly. Bullfinches haven't been sighted recently but I did catch a brief glimpse of a marsh tit while sheltering from the reduced temperatures in the summer house. I haven't seen one of those here for over a year.
I managed to lengthen my summer experience by spending five days in Berlin in continuing warm weather. This wasn't at all a Nature trip but of course one or two things did turn up.
It's sometimes observed that bird species have different behaviour patterns in the British Isles compared to Europe. The hooded crow for example we would need to look for in craggy seaside areas near the coast, but in Europe can be found strutting their stuff in posh residential areas, like this one I found in Westend district.
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| Hooded Crow |
There were half a dozen of them later on in the day on Onkel-Tom-Straße in Zehlendorf.
On the other side of the road, was a very red red squirrel bounding around in someone's front garden.
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| Red Squirrel |
Near the Gedenkstätte Plötzensee when I visited there was a nice meadow verge where I saw but couldn't get a decent photo of some common carder bees that had a much more gingery appearance than the ones I see here. There were a few small white butterflies too but, in the whole five days, I interestingly in view of the fine weather, did not see another species of butterfly - just a few dragonflies and a hornet at a cemetery I visited.
Following my recent first ever sighting of ivy bees
last time I came across some more at Zehlendorf and near the Zoological Garden.
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| Ivy Bee |
Not a great photo but the orange band at the top of the abdomen shows that it is a female.
