Butterflies and Bees

Its true. They need the native plants. Thats why I have my wildflower strip. The bees love the knapweed at the moment. You have loads of butterflies. Yesterday I saw one white and today I saw one tortoiseshell. Hardly any. But its early for Scotland.

Your photographs are brilliant - the detail is stunning ! I have buddleia at the bottom of the garden...I didn't realise it was a magnet for butterflies ! :)

Thanks Karen, I do have a 'wildflower' bit inside the front gate which has Tansy, Achillea, Lady's Bedstraw, Geranium, Leucanthemum and other bits in it, including the dreaded Bindweed and Ground Elder which I try to keep on top of, but not very successful. I do have Knapweed in the flower bed and plan to put that and Campions as well as others up on the field. I have about 200 Cowslips (no exaggeration) to go up there later. Your weather has been a bit murky lately I think, so you are probably right about it being early for them.

Hi New at this, Thanks for the compliment, you just don't see the ones that don't work - a blur of wings as it disappears, a bee's bottom disappearing into the flower and an empty space where something was honestly!
Yes, your Buddleia will be appreciated by the bees, hoverflies and butterflies. If you stick in 'bee bush' into your search bit you will come up with the Buddleia as well as other favourites.

Good photos. I hope you do decide to leave some wild areas for the insects. We don't get a good variety of them here these days but I'm pleased to know they are still around in your garden :)

Thanks Hywel, our garden probably consists of more 'wild' areas than maintained. The flower beds always seem full of weeds regardless of how often I try to keep on top of them. Sadly I look at a weed and think "that's pretty" and leave it, forgetting that weeds seed everywhere. The thistles up the field look spectacular when in flower, but then I forget to cut them off before the seed blows across everything else! Cutting down the Docks before they seeded AGAIN, I kept pressing OH to look out for Pheasant nests, just in case it was nesting in the bed of nettles and docks - always something to worry about disturbing, the Elder than had to come down in part as it was growing through the chicken run wire had a pigeon nest in (of course) so now is lop-sided as I hadn't the heart to remove it, not that we need MORE pigeons!

I don't need to worry about keeping any part of my garden wild, as my neighbour takes care of that for me! It's really overgrown, but I don't mind as it keeps the wildlife happy and my cats love it over there!

Wonderful pictures so many butterflies .

It's heartening to see all the butterflies in your garden. We have an 8ft hawthorn, alder & blackthorn hedge along the field side of our garden with nettles that tower above it on the other side, the headland all around the field is not cut so is full of all sorts. In the garden I have buddleias & bee friendly flowers, fennel that the hoverflies like etc but despite this I have seen very few butterflies, only a couple of gatekeepers & red admirals & small cabbage whites - no ladybirds either.
On the plus side I have lots of various bees, plentiful hoverflies & no white fly on the toms & just a few aphids on the roses.

That's great Lisa, you get the best of both worlds! You can keep you garden neat and know that the wildlife has a weedy patch.

Thank you Thrupennybit, not all my photo's are good, there's lots that end up in the bin! But the butterflies were amenable and caterpillars don't move fast!

It's strange Greenfinger that lots of people on here say they haven't seen many butterflies. Here in wilds of East Anglia everyone keeps saying what a good year it is for Butterflies! We have Hawthorn hedges too and I have never found caterpillars on it yet. When we were children we always found them, perhaps my eyesight was better or we are really losing the variety we had. Glad to hear that the farmers are leaving headlands to flourish, good for everything.

Well, I'm in Suffolk, E.Anglia, across the border from you & today I only saw one Gatekeeper which flew into the conservatory.
Did you see these DailyMail pics of the Ermine moth & the webs they make over hawthorn & blackthorn? Here's the link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2195935/The-hungry-caterpillars-Thousands-moth-larvae-weave-giant-web-shrubbery-protect-importantly-food-predators.html

Thanks Greenfinger, I hadn't seen the paper but had a look at your link. I have actually seen a whole hedge of this a few years back not far from Norwich Airport, quite a spooky sight! Also remember one year in Cornwall all the vegetation was covered in caterpillars along the coastal walk which put everyone off, then there was the year of the millions of Ladybirds everywhere. Nature can over create sometimes.

You really have some great shots of the butterflies and I'm not so "lucky" as you are...Today I saw a lovely monarch and went out to try and get a pic...but he must have been newly hatched because he was moving so fast that I just couldn't catch up. I check out my milkweed patch every morning hoping to find a chrysalis. We don't have many butterflies this year, but compared to last year they seem to be on the rebound with the hot dry weather finally finding us. Not seeing as many beetles as in previous years... every thing's a cycle. makes you wonder though, when things change so drastically from year to year.

I think it was 2 years ago now that the sparrows & starlings were on the amber list there numbers had decreased alarmingly - down by 60%. Whilst we don't see the huge flocks anymore there numbers do seem to have increased somewhat over the last year or so.

Just the thought of having Monarch butterflies in the garden would be lovely, but no doubt you have larger and nastier bugs than we do, so perhaps we will stick with our smaller butterflies and bugs.
The old saying about loads of berries on the Hawthorn and fruit on the trees meaning a bad winter, doesn't seem to have come to pass over here over the recent years. This year everything is packed, the Greengages will probably break the branches when the fruit gets ripe!
As you are fairly out in the wild you wouldn't think any farming or industrial contamination would affect you, but I suppose everything is linked.

We are not far from the huge flocks of Starlings which wheel about on the Fens a bit further North. But as for the Sparrows, this year is really the first year that I can say we have seen more than the odd one in the garden. I think they are picking up again and I plan to build them a communal nest box - planning is one thing, doing is another! But they have nested under the tiles of the bungalow, so might be here to stay.
We have lots of starlings which are really pretty birds up close, there was young one on the coconut shell which is packed with peanut butter for the birds, intended for the small birds, but the Starlings manage to hang on somehow. What I miss are the Lapwings which used to be all over the meadows when were children (a long few decades ago), called Peewits and we were a dab-hand at imitating their call!

I have the same pair of buntings that have nested here the last two seasons... We saw more robins with young this year as well. Also, a little flock of sparrows... Chippings, I think, have just finished training their young in the cedars nearby. The first few years here, (we've been here 6-1/2 years now) we had many raucous bluejays.. this year only a pair. Although I've not been able to lay eyes on them, I have heard the whistle of the cardinal in our bush and the warble of the oriole, too. The mornings of my childhood were so noisy with birdsong that it was hard to sleep past sunrise! How I wish that was so today. Fewer and fewer birds and butterflies. If only the mosquitoes, blackflies and no-see-ums would suffer the same!
We've had three years of no fruit on our apples... this spring was the worst of the last five, with no crabapples at all because of the army worms. no berries either come to think of it. Not a blackberry on my canes, and there was a lot of blossom. bees are too few, I think.

That's all a bit depressing Lori. Perhaps, hopefully, it's just a blip in Natures course, she does have them and bounces back again. Sadly with the disregard of the basics of human need - looking after the soil and insects that pollinate, I do wonder where it will lead. I watched a very interesting programme on TV about soil - sounds boring but was actually very interesting, but painted a sad picture for the future with the 'body' being leached from the fields and farmers trying to replace it with chemicals and fertilizers. Visions of the dust-bowl effect that was had in the US, especially as so many hedges here were ripped out in the 60's to make larger fields for bigger machinery. Now the wind howls across them and removes the dry topsoil!
Last year was a bad year for the Hawthorn berries and the fruit trees had very little, but this year they are all packed. Perhaps your trees have had a shock to the system and are taking time to recover - let's hope so. You can keep the tiny bugs, I hate what we have always called 'thunder bugs' or 'Harvest flies' which are Thrips that get everywhere, in your hair, clothing, washing - Yuk!