It's not been a great year for insects overall, but two species of butterflies have had a good year, at least! Red Admirals have been recorded as having had a great year across the UK. Today, Crafty Green Boyfriend and I had a lunchtime walk in North Merchiston Cemetery and saw around 20-30 of these lovely butterflies in total. They were enjoying the ivy flowers, which are one of the few plants in flower at this time of year and offer an invaluable resource for insects of all species.
Today in the cemetery, we also saw a few hoverflies enjoying the ivy, including this Banded Hoverfly (Syrphus sp)
and this Drone Fly (Eristalis sp)
I've seen a good number of Speckled Wood Butterflies this year, though we didn't see any today. On a recent visit to the cemetery, we saw over one hundred Speckled Wood butterflies!
These pretty butterflies are one of the few beneficiaries of climate change (at least in Scotland) as the warming temperatures are allowing them to move further up the country.
3 comments:
Lovely to see! We do get the Speckled Wood butterflies here; they are so pretty. We had an unusual moth here a few days ago too. We identified it as a ‘Merveille du jour’ moth. Have a good weekend! 😁
Hi Sal, oh a Merveille du Jour' such a beautiful moth, I've never been lucky enough to see one myself but I've seen photos....
You've shared some nice photographs here.
All the best Jan
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