Butterflies & Moths 2021

Not just yet here H as wet & windy weather accompanies the milder temps!

It's a little better today Wendy, the ice has melted out of the bird baths and now it is raining.
Hazel your wood burning stove in the kitchen sounds idyllic.

We had a few nice days last week & all of a sudden we had a Brimstone, then the next day, 2 Peacocks, 2 Red admirals & 2 Speckled woods.

A few more moths in & around the trap too, a Brindled Beauty

a Dotted Border

& my favourite was this micro-moth a Rufus-margined Button moth

They were all taken at a local Château with a wooded garden, I had to drop the traps off around 5h30pm so I could get home before the curfew & then back the next morning to see what was there, 11 species in all. 

Looks as if your Chateau is going to provide you with some lovely moths & butterflies H ... any news on lifting curfew yet?

Thanks Wendy. No good news here, numbers are going up & after all this I wouldn't be suprised if we end up with another lockdown, just at the start of Spring, great!! I've decided to go back to some other local woods I did in 2019 so have another spot to go to during the curfew. If it's a lockdown then it'll be end of play for a while!

Bit early in the morning I know but the wind woke me up and now having a nice cup of tea and looking over the latest threads. Lovely to see this years Butterflies and Moths Hazel, I do hope you don't have to do another lockdown, the last year has been so hard and I can't imagine another like it. The flora and fauna have kept me going but the weather is determined to be heard over here!! Mind you we had your sunshine Wendy yesterday, I did five minutes in the garden, wonderful. I also got depressed as I heard the farmer with tractor in the back fields cutting down the hedges again, I know the birds aren't nesting yet but they are still looking for sites etc and anyway why oh why do they have to cut the hedges back so much these days????

That's not good news Gaynor ... here there is disturbance of a different kind as I fervently hope that critters of all types quickly get used to the 24/7 stream of HGV's going past mine on their way to get covid tests at Manston lorry park before setting off again for Europe via Dover ... never any peace!!

Just watched Bed Fogle visiting a lady in Wales living off the land, now that is maybe what we should be aiming for, we have gone too far the other way now and need to think about simpler lives for everyone :-)

It is not just farmers, Gaynor, but a lot of folk, even some of the nicest, and some of them even nature, and bird-and-other-wildlife lovers, who seem to suffer from the same problem and just cannot resist manicuring, trimming and tidying up their space regardless of the time of year or of their possible knowledge that wildlife needs a bit of messy, unkempt plant life and other creatures around them in order to eat, breed and live. Perhaps it is some inheritance from the Victorians or whoever originated the notion that a tidy desk/house/whatever means a tidy mind or some such rubbish. Presumably the folk obsessed with tidying also are concerned about how others will view them if their hedges, lawns, etc., are not kept beautifully sculpted. A couple of years ago we heard a great talk about the speaker's efforts to persuade farmers in his area to only prune their hedges no more than every third year and also to only prune a third of their hedges each year. This gives the hedge plants time to flower which then feeds invertebrates, which feeds other wildlife and increases biodiversity, and the wider, wilder hedge growth shelters and protects wildlife as well. I was thrilled with the talk, but even though Mr GB (one of those nicest, nature-loving folk, or I would not have married him!) heard the same talk, he is still obsessed with tidying the garden far more than I would prefer. What can you do?!--Lol!