Autumn Butterflies

 Yesterday I carried out another in my series of butterfly surveys at Lauriston Farm Agro-Ecology Project in north Edinburgh. It's a beautiful place and the light was perfect for these photos

In the photo below, if you look carefully, you can see part of Lauriston Castle, which lies in beautiful grounds on the other side of a wall that marks the boundary of the agro-ecology project. (You can see photos of Lauriston Castle grounds in this blogpost from April).

Much of the Agro-ecology project involves allowing the fields to rewild, then there are areas where crops are being grown in community growing plots, then there are areas that have been planted with trees, including a small orchard and the area below which will be a general woodland area.

I didn't see many butterflies on yesterday's survey, apart from a good number of Speckled Woods, like this one (which I had photographed a few days earlier). Speckled Woods have two broods a year, so you're most likely to see them in early Summer or late Summer / early Autumn. There seem to be a lot of them around at the moment!

Today I was carrying out my regular voluntary patrol of the Water of Leith in Colinton and Craiglockart Dells and saw a couple more Speckled Woods and this lovely Red Admiral. This migratory species of butterfly is having a bumper year this year (see this report from Butterfly Conservation.)

The early Autumn colours were beautiful in the Dells!