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