Category Archives: butterfly

A few days without rain… yeah!

butterfly, wildlife

We had a lovely day day of sunshine yesterday and today is warm and sunny too.  Sadly that won’t last but at least it has been nice weather to do some gardening in.  I have been ripping out a few old rather scraggy looking ferns that were just filling some space until I got some new plants.  So some lovely new ferns have now been planted out, some of them have coppery tones, some are small spreading ones, one is silvery coloured and one is for a hole in the wall.  Can’t wait to see how they come on next year.  I really wanted to tackle the viburnum bodnantense dawn as some of the older stem/trunks are very gnarled and really aught to come out but I will have to be patient and do that late winter/early summer after it has had it’s main flowering season.
I finally managed to get a quick snap on my phone camera of the Speckled wood butterfly.  Wow are they flighty!  I have spotted quite a few speckled woods this year  and as far as I know they have green caterpillars.  I also spotted a  Grey dagger moth caterpillar (just molting it’s skin I think).  It brings back childhood memories of when I used to sit beneath our very small tree in our back garden, with my collection of these these bright caterpillar on my face! I know it was a strange thing to do, but at least I put them all back where I found them.

wildlife,
Pararge aegeria (speckled wood butterfly)
wildlife,
Acronicta psi (Grey dagger moth) caterpillar

Sunshine and slabs… Yay!

butterfly, wildlife

There is a bit of warm sunshine about with a few showers.  The slabbing is now under way so I cannot get access to the garden for the time being.  All very frustrating as I was ill last week and had neither the time nor the energy to get on top of the weeding and dead-heading before the landscapers started.  I am itching to get back out there as some of the plants in need of a bit of TLC. I haven’t been able to do my slug patrols either, but, maybe all the upheaval has meant they are less active.  I can but hope.  I will have to just potter about on the patio for the time being, which means a lot of scraping between the slabs to get the weeds out, and scrubbing the wall near the bird feeder (mostly pigeon poo).  There are plenty of butterflies about now and I did get a nice photo of a Red admiral but just missed my chance to get a snap of a Speckled wood.  Too slow getting my camera out.

wildlife, butterfly,
Vanessa atalanta (Red admiral)