The 2005 sightings started a little later than normal but this may simply be due to the poorer weather we had during March. Saturday April 2nd, a warm sunny day gave us our first Butterflies of the year - old faithfulls of Peacock, several Small Tortoiseshells and a couple of Male Brimstones. Lorraine thought she saw a Comma as well but didn't get close enough to confirm it. We are now fairly confident that Lorraine did see the Comma as we both saw (and Paul photographed) it on Wednesday April 6th.  April also saw the return of the Green Veined White but the last week of the month and the first week of May we were away on Holiday in the Algarve so we don't know what else turned up at home whilst we were away.  On our return and with the occasional decent weather we have spotted the Small White and Large White, the Male Orange Tip and the female Holly Blue.

      June has given us a nice surprise with a brief return of the Speckled Wood Butterfly. By now we normally have had several other regular butterflies return but so far by June 20th we are down in both numbers and returned species as well. On Sunday 19th we did see the Large Skipper briefly fly into the garden and the next day we had both Male and Female Large Skippers turn up. They have now been regular visitors to the garden and on Tuesday June 21st Lorraine saw a Red Admiral basking in the sunshine marking it's return. The good weather has been king to us as Paul also saw the Red Admiral on Sunday 26th  and things have picked up with the return of the Meadow Brown and Ringlet on Monday June 27th. Tuesday June 28th and yet another return with the appearance of the male Common Blue making an earlier than normal visit to our garden.

      Early July and on Saturday July 9th the return of the Essex Skipper although we did suspect this one from a possible sighting on July 3rd but it didn't stay around long enough to properly identify. the same day has also seen the return of the Small Skipper and after a month's absence the Green Veined White, Large White and Small Tortoiseshell have made an appearance. Monday July 11th and the Gatekeeper has returned although Lorraine suspected it a couple of days earlier. The rest of July was disappointing weather wise with no more 'new returns' for the year recorded. August had a mixture of warm and wet weather but amazingly we saw 16 different Butterflies including a surprise return of the Speckled Wood although we are still missing the return of 4 regulars and the never confirmed White Admiral. Well September came and went with still no sign of the missing 4 Butterflies and the last sighting was made by Lorraine of a surprise appearance of a Male Brimstone during mid October.  It's quite possible that we've simply not been watching or out at the right time to catch the missing Butterflies so we hope this isn't a bad sign for the future.   The Butterflies that did not appear to have returned were: White Admiral, Painted Lady, Wall Brown, Small Copper and the Brown Argus. :-(

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The Butterflies of our garden & bank at Horncastle

The 2005 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 saw 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 year.