Species of the week: white admiral (and other butterflies)

On any visit to Minsmere in late July or early August, you'll almost certainly certainly be greeted by a host of fluttering butterflies, dashing dragonflies or buzzing bees around the buddleia bushes, even before you reach the visitor centre.

These bushes are a great place to make a flying start to your 70 species challenge before heading out in search of some of the birds and plants on the list. One of the most obvious butterflies will be the red admiral, a large, showy, red, black and white butterfly that will be familiar to most visitors from their own gardens. This is one of the 70 species. The other common, familiar large butterfly is the peacock, with its distinctive eye-spots in the wings.

There is another large dark butterfly to look out for too, and this is a little bit more tricky to tick off from your 70 species checklist. White admirals are woodland butterflies that are best looked for during July and early August. The best place to see them is around the Woodland Trail, or in the woods near Bittern Hide, but if you are lucky one may appear on the buddleia bushes around the visitor centre. White admirals are distinctive butterflies, with large white patches in their otherwise black upperwings.

White admiral by Jon Evans

There's another exclusively woodland butterfly on your 70 species checklist that is even harder to spot, but July is also the best time to look for them. This the purple hairstreak, and it is most at home high in the oak canopy, making it a real challenge to spot - especially as it's also well camouflaged. Canopy Hide is a good place to look for them as you are at their level, but they too will sometimes descent to lower levels, especially where there's a few bramble flowers to feed on. Then , you may be lucky enough to see them close to the visitor centre.

Purple hairstreak by Jon Evans

There's other butterflies to look for one the 70 species list too. One of our smallest is the small copper, a beautiful orange and brown butterfly of grasslands. Then there's the speckled wood in woods, and the migrant painted ladies that will hopefully soon be arriving to join the others on the buddleias. And although they're not on the list, it's also worth looking out for commas, small tortoiseshells and small and large whites on the buddleias, gatekeepers, ringlets and meadow browns in scrub, and common blues, brown arguses and graylings in the dunes or along the North Wall.

Don't forget that this week is also Butterfly Conservation's Big Butterfly Count, so send them details of any butterflies that you do spot. They are also interested to hear about two of our day flying moths: the six spot burnet which is common along the North Wall, and hummingbird hawkmoths which have been seen on the buddleias over the weekend.

Dragonflies stole the show over the weekend, though with reports of not one, but two extremely rare visitors. First, a vagrant emperor was photographed on Saturday between South Hide and the sluice, with news filtering through in the evening via Twitter. Although it couldn't be found again on Sunday, a few lucky visitors did manage to locate the slightly less rare lesser emperor in almost exactly the same spot. Sadly, that has not been viewable from the visitor trails today either. There were, however, plenty of other dragonflies and damselflies to spot over the weekend, including emperor dragonflies, brown, southern and migrant hawkers, and the first willow emerald damselfly of the year that landed on a visitor in the Wild Zone!

Birdwise, the big news over the weekend was the presence of at least two broods of avocets on the Scrape. They were still present today, and may have a chance of survival as most of the gulls have suddenly departed following a successful breeding season. There are, however, still at least 50 Mediterranean gulls on the Scrape as well as up to 30 little gulls, and several common and Sandwich terns. Seven little terns were on South Scrape today, but there were no reports of the Arctic or roseate terns.

Perhaps the most unexpected discovery of the weekend, though, was made during the Wildlife Explorers' group campout on Saturday night when on our evening walk to Island Mere we were surprised to witness an impressive murmuration of about 10000 starlings at dusk! This is quite unusual at this time of year, so why not plan a late night visit for yourself. Better still, you can join our family campout this Saturday for a chance to spot them for yourself. Call us on 01728 648301 for further details.