Taking Stock

Intermittent bad weather and a recent covid infection have restricted my abilities a good deal.  Now I feel like this mediocre summer has slipped by me without managing to take much advantage of it.  The virtual loss of July meant only two truncated attempts to find the purple hairstreaks on the Derwent Walk, with only three or four distant sightings to show for it.  I never even attempted looking for white-letter hairstreak or grayling, finding the only suitable days were those when I had something else on.

The garden has provided the main source of consolation with continuing abundance of peacocks and red admirals on the plentiful buddleia.  I'm pleased though that I have resisted the temptation of repeatedly photographing them this year.  Nothing really substitutes for just observing them in action for a few minutes.  As the ability to take delight in what life has to offer subsides with age, I still find the appearance of lots of butterflies around the buddleia enthralling and probably always will.

It's interesting to note that the dominant visitor at the time of the Big Butterfly Count in July was, here as elsewhere, the red admiral, but by three weeks later the peacock was outnumbering them considerably.  Just recently, the red admiral has resurged and numbers of each are more or less equal.

I had wondered if I have seen more commas than small tortoiseshells this year.  Unfortunately when I decided to start checking about a week ago, numbers of both species dropped off and there isn't a large enough number being seen for comparison.  Painted lady has yet to appear.

It is known that it is a bumper year for the holly blue and I have now counted eight sightings without spending a great deal of time looking for them.  Only one actually landed for a short period of time, typically while I was busy with some sort of chore.

I've cut down considerably on the amount of bird food I put out because of rats but a pleasant surprise recently came from a visit from a female nuthatch, the first for many a long month.  Coal tits have also been more in evidence than earlier in the year.

Of bees there has been much less to report.  The highlight was the appearance of an early bumblebee queen, which presumably was feeding up before overwintering.  I have been keeping an eye out for flower bees but there has only been one genuine suspect that quickly moved on.

My attention was drawn one day by a specimen that seemed to have much more fur on its abdomen than a bumblebee but I think on investigation it is just a common carder bee, which has recently been the commonest garden visitor in the bee department.

Common Carder Bee

When I snapped it from on top, there was no sign of any abdominal fir at all.  Maybe it was just pollen dust.