28 Thursday May 2020
The highlight of yesterday’s walk to Lavernock Nature Reserve was seeing this little beauty, my first Small copper of the year.
They’re tiny butterflies but they punch well above their weight, fearlessly challenging any other butterflies that stray too close to their territory, as this one did today with a male Common blue.
This Small copper was in pristine condition so, presumably, had very recently emerged. The vibrancy and intensity of its copper colour was simply stunning.
26 Tuesday May 2020
I have a new favourite field, only discovered in recent months while I’ve been exploring new, less crowded, local footpaths for my exercise walks, and it’s exciting discovering, as the season progresses, what is living in this field. As I emerged from woodland into the field yesterday, a little burst of orange flashed across in front of my feet, and I knew immediately this was my first Large skipper of the year.
Despite their bright colouring, I find skippers are very good at disappearing in plain sight, so I took a couple of steps back, got my camera ready and waited. Less than 60 seconds had passed before the skipper bounced up from the long grass where it had been resting and flitted down on to the path again.
A second male then entered the territory of the first and they spiralled up into the air briefly, before separating and returning to their own patches, spat over.
I lingered a while to watch both butterflies, flying, perching, feeding, before I continued my walk. And to my delight, I found yet another male further along the track, so I assume ‘my’ field is home to a small but healthy colony of Large skippers. I’m already looking forward to seeing them again when next I walk that way.
19 Tuesday May 2020
Red admiral, that is. Last year, this was the first butterfly I saw, and it was early, in January. In fact, I saw two of them before January 2019 came to a close. This year it’s taken four and a half months but, finally, on Saturday, when I was enjoying a lovely wander along a local path, admiring the tall frothy loveliness of masses of Cow parsley, this little beauty floated towards me and settled, very obligingly, on a bramble bush right next to the path. Butterfly bliss!
12 Tuesday May 2020
Posted in insects, nature, wildflowers
Tags
British butterflies, British wildflowers, butterfly, Common blue butterfly, wildflowers on road verges, wildflowers on roadsides
One of the benefits of some local councils not mowing all the road verges at the moment is that wildflowers that would normally be strimmed to death are now being allowed to grow and bloom.
Not only does this mean we get to enjoy their glorious rainbow of colours but the wildflowers’ pollen and nectar also provide a nutritious feast for all the newly emerging insects.
And it was on one such uncut verge that I spotted my first Common blue butterfly of the year today, this stunning, pristine, little male.
If only the councils would mow less all the time, then we’d be able to enjoy both the flowers and the insects all through spring and summer, and it would also go a little way to reversing the huge decline in insect life that’s happening all over the world.
07 Thursday May 2020
Not only did I see my first dragonflies of the year yesterday at Lavernock Nature Reserve but I also spotted my first Dingy skippers (Erynnis tages).
At least four of these inconspicuous little butterflies were feeding on their favourite food plant, Common bird’s-foot trefoil, or basking on the compacted earth of the tracks through the reserve, as is their wont.
Their preferences for bird’s-foot trefoil and patches of bare ground are why these butterflies are often found on chalk and limestone grasslands, on brownfield sites and in disused quarries, amongst sand dunes and along open pathways adjacent to woodland.
Sun, shelter and good food – it’s not much to ask for. But, sadly, the Dingy skipper is one of many declining species of butterfly in Britain, probably due to the way land is managed and to the intensification of agriculture. So, I feel very privileged to be able to observe and enjoy these lovely little skippers so close to home.
05 Tuesday May 2020
I know I already posted about seeing my first Orange-tip butterfly of the year (The ostentatious Orange-tip, 15 April) but, for those not familiar with this lovely springtime butterfly, I thought it might be useful to see a bit more detail. So, here is a typical male Orange-tip, from the top and the side. The speckling on the lower wings looks green but that’s an optical illusion – the colours are actually yellow and black.
And here’s a female from both angles. If you only see her from the top, you might confuse her with one of the other white butterflies, though the dark patches are different in all the whites, and the Orange-tip also has a distinctive wing shape.
I managed to find several eggs during a recent walk – the newly laid eggs are white but turn orange very quickly. You’ll find them on the caterpillar food plants: Cuckooflower, Garlic mustard and Honesty are three wildflowers this butterfly favours. And, for the first time ever, I found a caterpillar. This is a 2nd instar (i.e. stage) – the larvae proceed through 5 instars, progressively growing larger, until they are ready to pupate.
You might be wondering why I gave this post the title of ‘the Lady of the Woods’. Well, according to Peter Eeles’s superb publication Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies (every home should have one!), this is the name given to the Orange-tip by Benjamin Wilkes in his Twelve New Designs of English Butterflies, published in 1742.
01 Friday May 2020
With the current restrictions on movement, my butterflying has got off to a slower start than usual but today I spotted my first Green-veined white butterfly of 2020, my tenth species for the year, during my walk around Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park.
This pristine male only appeared briefly, before disappearing amongst the leafy trees, but it was a joy to see him. These spring-brood Green-veined whites are often very pale – I can’t even see the small dark spots on his upper wings and he has only a hint of yellow colouring on his undersides. The summer brood, when they emerge in July and August, usually show darker markings – I’ll try and do a comparison post later in the year to show the differences.
23 Thursday Apr 2020
Tags
Adela reaumurella, British butterflies, British moths, butterfly, Green long-horn, Large white, Long-horn moth, moth, Pieris brassicae
During yesterday’s exercise meander around Penarth, I found two lovely Lepidoptera in one of the few local parks that’s still open.
The first was this amazing day-flying moth, the Green long-horn (Adela reaumurella). It may have a wingspan of only 14-18mm, but just look at those antennae (hence, the name ‘long-horn’). This is a male; the females have shorter antennae, which are half black, half white.
Then, to my delight, soon after seeing that stunning little moth, I spotted my first Large white butterfly (Pieris brassicae) for 2020. And, compared to the moth, it really is large, with a wingspan between 63 and 70mm. This is also a male; the females have two grey-black spots on their upper wings.
18 Saturday Apr 2020
We’ve had much-needed rain and low-cloud gloom for the past two days but, earlier in the week, when the sun was warm and glorious and my walk took me along the coastal path, it felt like proper Spring. The bird song was almost deafening and – what clinched the Spring-ness for me – I counted 12 Speckled wood butterflies along the path, either perched sun-basking or patrolling their patch of scrub or – the males – engaged in spiralling dogfights over territory. Springtime magic!
15 Wednesday Apr 2020
Tags
Anthocharis cardamines, British butterflies, butterfly, Orange-tip, Orange-tip butterfly, spring butterflies
If there is one butterfly whose male makes a truly conspicuous effort to impress the female of the species, then it must surely be the Orange-tip (Anthocharis cardamines). Those vivid orange wing tips are hard to miss, even when the males are speeding past at a hundred miles an hour. Today, at last, I saw my first Orange-tip for 2020 – in fact, I spotted four of these handsome chaps and, after following a couple back and forth along their chosen territories, I finally managed a single photo of one as it was refuelling.
