Quiet Days in the Garden

A bit of a quiet phase after the excitements of Saltwell Park.

I know I said that butterfly snaps on the buddleia have been too frequent but there had to be an exception for the lone painted lady that appeared around 10 days ago.

Painted Lady

It's only the second one I've seen this year and I think the first in the garden since the Painted Lady Year in 2019.

A trend in the garden has been the increase in commas and I've wondered if this has been at the expense of the small tortoiseshell.  Pretty much absent at the start of summer, the latter have now started to appear and I did actually have two at the same time last week.  But the commas certainly have the majority, reversing the usual trend.  They did disappear for a time after heatwave but are now back in small numbers, presumably a fresh new brood. 

Most of the whites coming to the buddleia continue to be Large Whites with just the odd small white.

The buddleia certainly attracts large numbers of bumblebees but nothing out of the ordinary i.e. buff-tailed and white-tailed plus occasional carder bees.  Then yesterday a massive tree bumblebee turned up, big enough in fact to be a queen.  I think there is a theory that tree bumblebees can overwinter.

One surprise was an appearance by a hover fly I've never seen before.  It was extremely easy to identify it as a pellucid fly adventuring out from the nearby trees.

Pellucid Fly

A walk in the Alnwick area last week only produced a worn speckled wood.  As elsewhere much of the vegetation had dried up.