The Butterflies of our garden & bank at Horncastle

The 2009 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.

Sunday, March 15th I (Paul) spot a Comma as I drive through Horncastle then  Lorraine sees one fly and land briefly in our Garden. On Wednesday March 18th Paul was clearing out the Garage and disturbed a  Small Tortoiseshell which flew away so we hope it has survived as that night there was a frost. Saturday March 21st and Lorraine spots two Male Brimstone Butterflies (Paul saw one later that afternoon) and strongly suspected a Speckled Wood as it quickly flew past her and the description she gave fits it well. The warm spell is doing them good! Into early April and the 1st had warm weather and sunshine that brought out the Male and Female Brimstone, the Small Tortoiseshell and the Peacock arrived! April 13th, Easter Monday and the sun came out mid afternoon (at last!) and we had a brief flyby of Holly Blue butterfly, Peacocks, Commas, a Small Tortoiseshell, M&F Brimstone and Green Veined White. April 15th to 19th and we've seen all the different species spotted so far this year in the last few days including a return of the Speckled Wood Butterfly. Very warm and sunny on the 20th and as well as several of the above mentioned butterflies we can now confirm the return for this year of the Large White when it landed close to us! Another first return for the year on the 22nd when the Male Orange Tip flew round the garden and along the bund. Male Small White seen in the garden on May 1st but had been suspected as one of the whites during late April. First few warm days of early May has given us regular sightings of the Speckled Wood, GVW, Large White, male Orange Tip and the Holly Blue. Saw the Peacock on the 7th on our fence looking a bit bedraggled though! Mixed weather since then with lots of sunny periods and showers so we've only spotted the various main whites. However a nice surprise on the 20th May when we had the earliest (for us) appearance of a Male Common Blue Butterfly land on our lawn and later that day we had the first return for the month of the male Brimstone. Bank Holiday weekend (May 23-25th UK) and wonderful sunny weather with a nice return of a somewhat battered looking female Holly Blue, Female and male Brimstones, all our regular Whites and a nice surprise when we had a Painted Lady Butterfly whizz past us on Sunday and then come into the garden on Monday! Into June and we had several new returns for the year. June 8th saw our first view of the Large Skipper then bad weather cut down numbers until we had a good sunny spell towards the end of the month which gave us the first view of the Meadow Brown on the 24th then Ringlet on the 27th. With some very hot days in early July we spotted the Small Skipper (initially thought it was the Essex until Paul photographed it!) on July 7th then a brief sighting of the Gatekeeper on the 12th and confirmation of the Essex Skipper the same day. So far (up to mid July) we've had 18 butterflies return but for some unknown reason the grassy section along the base of the bund behind us suddenly was cut which seems to have cut down the numbers of Meadow Browns and Ringlets so we're monitoring the situation and hope it doesn't affect the return of the final batch of Butterflies. Final late update the Red Admiral returns to give us 19 Butterflies but the following Butterflies did not return in 2009: Wall butterfly, Small Copper, Brown Argus and the one we now suspect will never return, the white Admiral. What was a nice surprise was to have a Red Admiral visit us on the 4th November!

Webmaster © Paul L Money 2010

The table below is a record of the number of different Butterflies we have seen for each month of the year. The Cumulative number records the total number of different UK Butterflies seen at home through the year.