butterfly heaven

For the first time this year the air is full of butterflies.  One can see why the buddleia is called the butterfly bush. There was even a solitary painted lady on the bush amongst the dozens of red admirals, peacocks and tortoiseshells. Below are two pictures of a female wall brown and friend. Wall browns are usually very skittish and hard to photograph but the weather has been so wet they are probably desperate to refuel.

m

yum yum

William, the new kid on the block, tucking in to his mare's milk, and showing signs of his curious and friendly temperament. He was born 3 months ago.

the sun has got his hat on

Despite the most miserable wet cloudy cold dreary August ever (bar the golden days of London 2012) a warm day has brought out some of our more colourful butterflies en masse. Make love while the sunshines! The butterflies have been getting so desperate they have even been on the wing in the rain. We are getting so desperate we may join the mass exodus leaving Cornwall every weekend.

a peacock and a silver-washed fritillary at the
knapweed bar, above, and on the right a handsome peacock.

confrontation

a young hawk (not sure which type) and a magpie confront each other in the garden today.

take me to your leader

there may not be many butterflies around but there are a lot of dragonflies zipping up and down. I think this is a southern hawker although it isn't exactly the same (see link to British Dragonfly society)

the hair of the cat

This unusual looking caterpillar is probably a larva of some sort of sawfly (see link to previous Spotblog page). Apparently the word caterpillar is derived from an old french word chatpelose, or hairy cat. I find it hard to believe that anyone thought that caterpillars looked like cats; maybe the French had very small cats.

meadowlands

the meadows are so impoverished around here we have had to plant our own.