Butterfly Review

The first weekend in August I was in Krakow to celebrate my son's fortieth birthday.  Obviously the time was mainly dedicated to celebrations of various kinds.  Apart from a chance sighting of a peregrine falcon in the town centre, we did however end up in the zoo.

I'm not a great fan of zoos but bever having visited one since childhood, I did actually rather enjoy myself checking out this and that and confirming my son's impression that the eagle owl had been mis-translated into English on the sign - as I could see it was correctly labelled as Uhu in German.

I won't go into boring detail but here are a couple of the better photographs:

Pigmy Hippopotamus

Leopard

On arriving back home last Tuesday, it was delightful to see several butterflies fluttering around the buddleia bushes.  

I think I have to reverse my pessimistic forecast about butterfly numbers this year as it's apparent that the later flying species have done very well.  Not to be seen before I left, peacocks have arrived from nowhere in large numbers and I see that the Big Butterfly Count has registered a big increase in the number of red admirals.

Here however, the comma has definitely been the butterfly of the year, appearing in twos and threes several times a day in good sunshine.

Peacocks and Comma

Also very gratifying is that I have now seen three holly blue passing over the garden.

The loser in all this may be the small tortoiseshell, which for the first time has been appearing less frequently than the comma.  

On a brief cycling rest stop at Ryton Meadows last Thursday, I spotted two small copper and a small heath.  It may be that the serious fire that devastated much of the woodland scrub last year has had a positive result in allowing the heathland grasses and flowers to reclaim some territory.  It will be interesting to see how this land gets managed in future.

More recently, I have faced a couple of identification challenges at home.

A green dragonfly has turned up on three occasions to sun itself in the garden.

Southern Hawker?

It's definitely a hawker and I think probably a Southern rather than a Common Hawker but the difference between the two is small and I'm no expert.  Interestingly the wings are almost completely transparent.

Likewise the moth I found snoozing on the garage wall looks to be a grey carpet but I couldn't find an exact image match and there are similar species.

Grey Carpet?

It's still one of the most enjoyable times of the year for me when butterflies appear in numbers, weather permitting.

Staycation Time

 As if to prove the wisdom of my last post, a speckled wood came sunbathing on the garden furniture on Sunday but departed again without showing any interest in the buddleia.

Speckled Wood

The same could not be said of the small tortoiseshells, who increased in number as a not especially warm day went on. At one point I counted nine in total on the three buddleia bushes in the back.

Small Tortoiseshells

Apart from (mainly large) whites, only one red admiral showed up.

The day after I set off for planned staycation in Lincolnshire,  Apart from a much-needed change of scenery, I was hoping to find some butterfly and bird species not available on my home patch.

The plan got off to a good start when I rode along the track into Southrey Woods in a heatwave and quickly noticed some brimstone butterflies nectaring on blue flowers that looked like snall cornflowers.  At first I thought they were the pale version of the drimstone but his may have been down to the brightness of the sunlight.  There were about 20 seen in the total time I was there.

Brimstone

There also a good piece of fortune when a single silver-wsshed fritillary started to fly around at speed near where I was having lunch.  Unfortunately it never settled and an attempt to video it in flight didn't come off.  Although I had seen brimstones near my grandparents' house as a kid, that was definitely my first UK silver-washed fritillary sighting,  Also observed were a good number of green-veined whites, small tortoiseshells and red admirals - and this time a couple were feeding near to a peacock - a few small white and a single comma.

There was also a very large fly that looked like a hornet with a yellow hood but I think from facebook posts of similar sightings in Dumfries and Galloway, it is some form of horsefly.

All around the drains there are common darters and I managed to get a photo of one that settled at Southrey.

Common Darter

Things went less well later and on the following day when I was looking for two sites that are known to have the brown hairstreak as I couldn't find either of them!  Apart from a lack of signposting, in one case it was down to a major navigational error on my part.

After seeking creature comforts in Bardney, I decided to ride back very slowly along the Witham with my eyes open and was frankly dissappointed by how little I saw,  A couple of whites, a few swallows and very little else.  It was a bit like the Canal du Midi two years ago.

One minor positive was that I managed to catch an example of the larger dragonflies that crazily landed in a hawthorn bush. It's a southern hawker.

Southern Hawker

I'm pleased with this from a photographic point of view, shot from six metres away in dense foliage.