Butterfly mind

[anef]

It's difficult to work in my room at the moment as it overlooks one of my neighbour's buddleias.  Every time my gaze drifts away from the screen I spot another butterfly that I don't recognise, and I either have to try to identify it or rush outside to get a better view.

I should explain that I'm actually very ignorant about butterflies, and the ones that I can identlfy without looking them up are Cabbage Whites and Red Admirals.  And we've had plently of the former.  But we've also had Peacocks (what seems like hundreds of them), and I have also spotted a Comma, some small Tortoiseshells, and the other day a Gatekeeper.  That wasn't even on the ten most common list! (See  here for pictures:  http://www.britishbutterflies.co.uk/identification.asp)

It has been the most astonishing summer for butterflies.  Our garden is (quite unintentionally) bee and butterfly friendly - both we and our neighbour have a number of buddleias, and we've got quite a few herbs that insects love - lavender, sage, pot marjoram, oh, and a thistle.  So normally we get lots of bees.  But I've never seen so many butterflies.  Let's hope that they breed successfully.

Comments

[dalmeny]

I miss butterflies. We don't get many of them in South Australia.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

The butterflies have been one of the many joys of this amazing summer. Like you, our garden has lots of the kinds of plants pollinators love (lavenders, herbs, buddleia - all the flowers in the grass we've let go wild), and likewise, it's more down to inertia on our part than intent. We've always had loads of different bees, which makes for a lovely humming noise of an afternoon. But last couple of so called 'summers' we'd not seen a single butterfly, it was so wet. And now - wow! Lots of cabbage whites, lots of peacocks and - thanks to your link - some which I think are either commas or speckled woods. Thanks for link, btw - means I can put names to them better now.

[drplokta]

"Cabbage whites" are actually really difficult to identify, because the term gets used for both large whites and small whites, which are quite hard to tell apart.

We too have had an outstanding summer for butterflies, although of course since it's our first August in the new house we don't know how many there would normally be.

[anef.livejournal.com]

I'll certainly bear that in mind when looking at white butterflies, mentally annotating them "Cabbage Whites - or maybe not!"

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I have two buddleia TREES and haven't seen that many butterflies! Maybe they are too high up? And two lavender pots, other herbs :-(

Croatia was over run with wasps. Relieved Scotland does not seem to be.

I notice as part of the Death of LJ you no longer write up your Edfringe show and food selections - thats a shame!

(I havent either, i know - I will try to briefly if only as aide memoir fo future years. With dance things ti really does help especially.)