Butterflies Strike Back

Peacocks

I certainly spoke too soon in bemoaning the demise of the nymphalidae family in my last post!  It just took a couple of days of decent sunshine and they were out in force on the buddleia and gradually outnumbering the whites - first the small tortoiseshells on Sunday and then the peacocks, which were dominant by Wednesday when not a tortoiseshell appeared.  

Red admirals were however not to be seen, reinforcing my perception that they don't appear much when there are large numbers of peacocks, one of which got up close and personal, landing on my shoulder.

Things got even more interesting on Tuesday morning, when I noticed a wall brown nectaring on the buddleia.  I thought I'd seen it the day before but took it for a comma that disappeared when I investigated further.

Not only is wall brown not a common sighting in this area, I had never seen one on buddleia before.

As if to cap it all, the following day, a comma did turn up and spent a great deal of time gorging itself.

Then the whole thing came to an end and the murk descended again.  Today there wasn't a single butterfly anywhere.

Wall Brown

Comma