The Butterflies of our garden & bank at Horncastle

The 2006 Season 

     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!

Webmaster © Paul L Money 2010

  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. The Cumulative number records the total number of different UK Butterflies seen at home through the year.

* 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!