The Butterflies of our garden
& bank at Horncastle
The 2006 Season
Note that 1st visits
for the year are marked in red.
Where noted the sex of the butterfly is mentioned
as some species can be quite different between Male and Female and
whichever is spotted second is highlighted with green.
Our first sightings! Peacock
and Comma (both of us) and later
on a Small Tortoiseshell
fluttered around Paul on Wednesday April 5th early afternoon when
the air was warmed by the spring sunshine. Lorraine spotted the Male
Brimstone on April
13th and again on the 14th when Paul also saw it. April 28th saw
the return of the Holly Blue spotted by Lorraine whilst Paul got it the next day.
Good weather now in early May (3rd, 4th and 5th) has given us a boost
with a welcome return of the Speckled Wood
and the Green Veined White as well as spotting
a Female Brimstone.
May 5th also gave us our first sighting of the Male Orange Tip Butterfly. The number of different
Butterflies seen so far in May beats last years and the month has only
just begun! We have just discovered that an image of a suspected GVW is
actually of a Male Small White taken on May
4th! We have now exceeded last years number of different species in May
by 50%! May 18th and we finally confirmed the Large
White Butterfly when it landed in the garden! On a trip to Snipe
Dales Country Park near us Lorraine and I were surprised to see a Red Admiral
but we guess it'll be a while before it is seen in our garden! and WE WERE
WRONG! Monday May 22nd and a Red Admiral fluttered
into the garden and landed on Lorraine before moving onto the Lilacs! This
now makes our May total number of species up on 2005 by 83%! Now we have
'Flaming June' living up to its reputation and so far we've had 7 different
Butterflies including a Female Common Blue
on June 8th and a Male Large Skipper on the
9th. We think the Painted Lady keeps a diary
as it appeared this year on the 14th June - the same date as in 2003!
Two more arrivals as June ends with the Meadow
Brown (Male) on June 24th and the Ringlet
on June 30th. July is here and on the 11th we welcomed back 3 returns for
this year: Small Copper (Lorraine spotted this),
Male Gatekeeper and the Essex Skipper. Friday 14th and we also
had the Small Skipper arrive so now we have
had return all but two of our main Butterflies. Sunday 30th July and a
great day for butterflies as we had 14 species visiting the garden with
one species spotted in the bund towards the industrial estate that one
being the return of the Brown Argus - hurray!
It's late October as we continue to have quite mild weather and in we've
had a Red Admiral and even more surprising on Thursday morning Oct 12th
a Painted Lady, what's more it returned on Monday Oct 23rd making this the
latest we've seen Butterflies here! Looks like we wont be getting the Wall
Butterfly back for this year but at least 21 out of 22 is not bad!
The table below is a record of the number of different
Butterflies we have seen for each month of the year so follow the table
to check on our progress through the year. The Cumulative number records
the total number of different UK Butterflies seen at home through the current
year.
Month
|
March |
April |
May |
June |
July |
August |
September |
October |
Number seen
|
0 :-(
|
5
|
11
|
11
|
19
|
12*
|
9
|
2
|
Cumulative
|
0 :-(
|
5
|
11
|
16
|
21
|
21
|
21
|
21
|
* Note we were
away for half of August so this probably does not reflect the true picture.
We also know that the weather whilst we were away was pretty poor!
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