Last Butterflies of Summer

It's been a poor year for most of our butterflies (you can read about this in more detail in Butterfly Conservation's report on the Big Butterfly Watch).

I've certainly seen very few butterflies this year and so was delighted to see several peacock butterflies at various places in our recent trip to Dumfries and Galloway. They seem to have a keen ability to align themselves with flowers that bring out the detail of their colouring. Aren't they beautiful?

For more butterflies colour co-ordinated with flowers, see Sandy's lovely photos here on Garden Path.

Then today on Arthurs Seat, just as I said to Crafty Green Boyfriend it must be too late for small copper butterflies we saw one.

And then another and another and another. Never have I seen so many at one time! One of my favourite little butterflies (and they are very little indeed!).

It was also lovely to see lots of house martins flying around Arthur's Seat today as indeed it had been to see lots of swallows in all the farm fields in Dumfries and Galloway while we were there. 

I'll be blogging more about our trip to Dumfries and Galloway in the next few days, but meanwhile you can catch up with these posts here and here. 

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.