Kitchen Garden Forum

PJ Thanks for that - the last lot were gatekeepers then but we do have the meadow brown ones too.

I think the ones I saw are gatekeepers, if they are the ones in the lower photo. I will try and get a closer look.

OOPs I thought that the top photo was a gatekeeper!

Top photo is the Gatekeeper, bottom one is the Meadow Brown

My buddleias haven't flowered yet but there have been Gatekeeper, Meadow brown, Speckled wood, Large white, and one Painted Lady butterfly this week. There are also lots of Plume moths and dozens of Five spot Burnet moths. Today there were also masses of honey bees, more than I've seen for ages.

The garden has got completely out of control in places and all the weeds "wild flowers" along with the foxgloves, borage, mallows and others I've planted deliberately, must suit the insects, not forgetting the better summer weather this year.

I haven't seen any honey bees but the lavender has been alive with bumblebees of all sorts of types. I haven't spent time identifying them but they are all sorts of sizes and colours.

Had some honeybees yesterday on the lavender

I hadn't seen hardly any honey bees, until the "Bottle Brush" started flowering a couple of weeks ago. It's covered in them now

Our buddleia are flowering. Only one butterfly so far: tortoiseshell but we get most in August (we once had 29 painted ladies all at once).

Lots and LOTS of honey bees and all types and sizes of bumble bees....

(we have foxgloves, wild geranium - blue - a great bee favourite, oriental poppies (they love those), opium poppies , wild poppies and all types... .)

On a good still day, you can listen to bees humming 10 metres away, there are so many...

PJ - Any idea what this is? I photographed it a year or two ago and thought it was a ringlet but thought you might know what it really is. It was resting on an aucuba in my garden.

glallotments wrote:
PJ - Any idea what this is? I photographed it a year or two ago and thought it was a ringlet but thought you might know what it really is. It was resting on an aucuba in my garden.

Hi glallotments,

It is a Speckled Wood.

Masses of Painted Lady butterflies on the buddleia's these last few days. They seem to prefer the white one as well. Also loads of Gatekeepers on the thyme

We have loads of gatekeepers (just showing off now I know what they are) but not on buddleias - on grass heads and blackberries.

The other butterflies are heading in now Small Tortoisehell and Painted Lady but as yet no Peacocks which we usually have lots of. We have had an occasional comma too but not a many as usual yet.

On a less welcome note wasps have decided to set up home just under our water tap box and another lots seem to be living around the roots of one of the dahlias.

I don't mind them being where I can avoid them but not keen on them around the water tap.

Buddleias now in full flower - still not seen a single butterfly on any of them
Even the cabbage whites are few and far between.

Morning Alan, at work Friday, i saw the most Butterflies i have seen for years and years. There were between forty and fifty at any one time, and this was between very heavy showers. A good varied selection as well.

It really did look like a scene from yester-year.