Butterflies

New Year’s Resolutions

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Well 2015 is over and I reckon it’s been a pretty good year for the wildlife in the garden. The final tally includes:

  • Elephant Hawk-moth155 species of moth recorded in the garden, plus about 6 more seen out and about. Most of the 155 came to the moth traps, but a few were more adventurous and made it as far as the bathroom!
  • Common Blue28 species of butterfly bagged, of which 17 appeared in the garden at least once during the year.

 

  • Bee on buddleia12 species of bee in the garden (which reminds me I must do a bee post soon). At the height of the summer (such as it was) the garden was buzzing with bee activity.

 

  • 7 species of shieldbug in the garden, including a rarity for Worcestershire – the Box Bug (which remains the only wildlife to have used our new bird bath!)

 

  • Hedgehog3 mammal species in the garden (grey squirrel, hedgehog and regular if unidentified bats) plus one family of mice living in the garage.

 

  • 3 amphibian species (toad, frog and common newt) visiting our pond/bog and surviving attacks from our garden furniture.

 

  • One sparrowhawk (and consequently one less sparrow) in the garden. Numerous other small birds though eating their way through a small fortune’s worth of bird seed.

 

  • Blue Tit on Suet FeederOne family of blue tits successfully fledged from our bird box, after 6 years of it sitting empty. Fingers crossed for a repeat next year.

 

  • Swollen Thighed BeetlePlus numerous beetles (including my personal favourite – the swollen-thighed beetle), molluscs, ants, wasps, hoverflies and other assorted invertebrates.

 

  • TeaselsAnd finally of course to maintain the “too lazy” ethos – zero weeds were harmed in the making of this list!

 

So that brings me to 2016 and some New Year’s resolutions. As there is virtually no chance of me succeeding with any of my usual resolutions (cut down the drinking, lose weight, grow taller, read the classics, write a classic, stop fantasizing about George Clooney etc. etc. etc.) I thought I’d make an alternative list of things I might actually achieve.  So for 2016 I hope to:

  • Try and see at least 4 more species of butterfly – there are lots of great wildlife reserves within easy distance of Malvern, so hopefully we can bag at least some of the following: Grayling, Wood White, Purple Emperor, Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary, Silver-studded Blue and Green Hairstreak.
  • Have a go at beetle trapping. Having more or less got the hang of the moth traps, it would be good to expand our insect repertoire.
  • Dig a new pond – one that actually has water in, not just soggy mud.
  • Replace at least some of the overgrown weeds with more butterfly and bee flower beds.
  • Work out what species those unidentified bats are – it’s been bugging me for years!
  • Get that moth tattoo I’ve been toying with for ages!
  • Learn to photoshop convincingly so I can fabricate evidence of the above when I fail to achieve these resolutions too!

Wishing all lazy wildlife enthusiasts a happy, healthy and environmentally friendly 2016.

Fair Weather Friends

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It’s finally feeling like November here today – it’s bloody freezing! Far too cold to contemplate going out in the garden; much better to stick to the safety of the sofa and trawl through this year’s photos looking for memories of warmer days. Butterflies must be the ultimate symbols of sunny weather and this year the other half and I set out to see as many of the British species as we could. We’re still only about half way, having now seen 28 of the fifty-something species. Well it’s sort of 28 and a half species, as we went looking for a Purple Emperor, but only managed to find one sad little wing lying on the ground!

We’re lucky living in Worcestershire to have access to so many great nature reserves. First stop was the Wyre Forest where we saw our first Pearl Bordered Fritillaries. This is one of the UK’s most threatened species and the Wyre Forest is managed to provide suitable habitat for them, with great success. We also managed to get our best photos yet of the Common Blue butterfly, thankfully not as endangered, but just as beautiful all the same.

Pearl Bordered Fritillary Common Blue

We’d hoped to see White Admirals at Monkwood, but figured it was a long shot; but as we got out of the car, two flew over our heads across the carpark. White Admirals are on the decline too, so we were really chuffed to have ticked them off the list. Spotting them turned out to be the easy bit, getting a photo a bit trickier. Fortunately Monkwood is full of other species that kept us snapping photos, such as some very obliging Large Skippers (left photo), who seemed so keen to be photographed they might as well have taken selfies. Eventually though one White Admiral settled long enough to get some decent shots.

Large Skipper White Admiral

Trench Wood provided our best views so far of Silver Washed Fritillaries – previously only seen in a pub carpark. These large stunning butterflies (photographed here with a Meadow Brown) are fairly common in Trench Wood and seem way to exotic for the Midlands!

Silver Washed Fritillary & Meadow Brown.jpg

Grafton Wood is a stronghold for the endangered Brown Hairstreak butterfly. This is a very small butterfly and notoriously difficult to see, let alone get a photo of, so we didn’t hold out much hope. What we hadn’t counted on was that you don’t have to spot the butterfly, you just have to spot the crowd of butterfly hunters, clustered round a particular bush. Sure enough a few polite questions later and we’d “bagged” our first brown hairstreak photos. It really is a beautiful creature, but has suffered greatly from habitat loss, so we’re very lucky to be able to see them at Grafton.

 

Top of the list for next season’s butterfly bagging – a complete and preferably living Purple Emperor!

I’m a Lady!

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A gorgeous Painted Lady butterfly chose Sunday to make an appearance in the garden – in the nick of time to get rec on the last day of the Big Butterfly Count – perfect timing! Like the hummingbird hawkmoths, these beautiful butterflies are also summer migrants from North Africa and in some years they arrive in their thousands. They only live for a few weeks so it’s amazing that they can emerge in Africa, fly over to the UK and still have time to spend a few days gorging themselves on the nectar in our garden!

 

Old Lady MothPossessing slightly less obvious beauty is this Old Lady moth, which coincidentally I was trying to photograph just as the Painted Lady came flaunting herself around the garden on Sunday morning. About the same size as the Painted Lady, the Old Lady is much more sombrely coloured and clearly less agile, as she flew off with a laboured flapping, as if she was really too heavy to fly. I say “she”, but of course this particular Old Lady could have been a “he” – I didn’t examine it that closely!

Can’t think why but I felt closer to the slightly batty old lady than I did to the bright young thing!

 

Big Butterfly Count

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Silver Washed Fritillary & Meadow Brown.jpgThe annual Big Butterfly Count starts tomorrow. It’s a chance for everyone to get involved counting butterflies (and a few moths) to improve our knowledge of their populations. This in turn helps the conservationists plan how best to protect our British butterflies. All it takes is 15 minutes of your time. You can do your count anywhere – at home, at work, out on a walk, at the pub, wherever you fancy. Full details can be found at: http://www.bigbutterflycount.org/

I’ll aim to do several counts in the garden here over the coming weeks and hopefully post a few photos – assuming some butterflies make an appearance!