March 29th 2004: Lorraine caught sight of two Butterflies just as we were driving away from home to go out shopping. One was light coloured and the other orange-ish. March 30th: Paul at work :-(  but Lorraine clearly spotted the Male Brimstone and Peacock Butterflies during the late morning making them our first officially recognized Butterflies for the year. March 31st and we both saw them plus a couple of Small Tortoiseshells. Later that afternoon the Comma also drifted into the garden so it was a good day for our colourful friends! Those few days had been quite mild so these Butterflies were probably ones that had come out of hibernation. Similarly Easter Monday was fairly warm and we had the Comma and Male Brimstone visit. Late April and the Green Veined White (GVW) returned and Lorraine spotted the Orange Tip Butterfly on Tuesday April 27th. May saw the Brimstones, Peacock, Comma, GVW and Male Orange Tips fairly regularly.

      Late May (27th in the morning) we spotted a Blue Butterfly and from past experience we're sure it was the Holly Blue Butterfly and we also finally confirmed that some of the 'small white butterflies' were most probably the Female Orange Tip as we viewed one up close when it landed in our garden - ironically the F OT has no orange tip but the underside was identical to the male whilst the upperside could be confused from a distance with either the GVW or Small White. We also spotted what appeared to be a Large White flutter by quite quickly several times and again it's flight pattern resembled what we've seen before for the Large White so we're confident that it had returned. June was a poor month and we seemed to be down for the number of returns as compared with 2003 - possibly due to the weather and us being away when there were several days of good weather! The Large Skipper  became a regular visitor for the last few days of June although it was spotted early in the month and then we had the return of the Meadow Brown and Ringlet and a brief return of the Small Tortoiseshell after a gap of a couple of months. June 30th also saw the return of the Small Skipper.

      July started well with Sunday July 4th having the return of the Painted Lady and a welcome return after a couple of months absence of the GVW as well as plenty of Ringlets and Large Skippers. Wed and Thurs July 7th and 8th saw the return of the Gatekeeper (7th) and Essex Skipper (8th) and the Red Admiral returned on Saturday July 10th making the number of different butterflies seen for July double from Junes abysmal showing! July 18th and we had a very late return of the Small White Butterfly whilst on July 25th we finally spotted the Common Blue Butterfly (male) along the bank at the back and I (Paul) managed to photograph it again. Although we've not seen it at the back or in our garden we have seen the Speckled Wood butterfly fairly locally over at Old Bolingbroke on July 22nd.  Thursday July 29th and in the afternoon we finally saw the Small Copper Butterfly and Brown Argus Butterfly as well as the female Common Blue. August started well with an abundance of Peacocks, Small Tortoiseshells and gatekeepers in particular and the Wall Butterfly returned which now made 21 Butterflies that have returned to either our Garden or the bank along the back of us. September and October saw rapid declines in all species and as we are neared the end of October we hadn't seen any Butterflies for a couple of weeks so guess the period of visibility was over for the year. :-(

Butterflies that we have not spotted at our site this year: White Admiral Butterfly (very remote possibility of this returning) Speckled Wood Butterfly .

Webmaster © Paul L Money 2010

The Butterflies of our garden & bank at Horncastle

The 2004 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.

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.