Very interesting. I was still seeing Painted Ladies up here until about a week ago and I was wondering why they hadn't already started to fly south. It is great to know that the enormous number we have seen here this year has made it back to Africa. I wonder how they will do next year.

Fantastic book. Thank you for all the effort you have put into it Pete. I have enjoyed looking at the different instars of each species of caterpillar, particularly the rare species.

Wurzel wrote:Brilliant stuff Nick - despite the south having a greater range of species to have a Scotch Argus as a garden tick is incredible

Have a goodun

Wurzel

Thanks Wurzel.
Yes, you have to wonder how many people in the UK have Scotch Argus in their gardens!

I love your Adonis Blue pictures and the fresh Painted Ladies. Strangely I am still only seeing very worn Painted Ladies, although I am receiving reports of fresh new ones. The Wasp Spider is interesting. We used to find enormous spiders like that in the south of France. I wonder if they were the sa...

David, It was rather surreal. The weather could have been better. It was really windy, so apart from the Peacocks there were not a lot of butterflies around. It seemed strange that there were so many Peacocks when there were so few other species flying. It was a beautiful walk, ranging from a lovely...

It seems so hard to get the balance between over-grazing and under-grazing right! Add to that the various tree diseases that are spreading across the country and there can be a worrying lack of decent habitat for butterflies. They do appear to be quite resilient and they manage to seek out small clu...

Reading through your diary it always strikes me how many more species of butterflies you have down there than we have up here in Scotland. Chalkhill Blues, Adonis Blues and Large Blues, Marbled Whites and Gatekeepers. Of those I have only briefly seen a Gatekeeper! I think I will have to have a visi...

Thank you Wurzel. Many of the butterflies I saw that day were very worn. I think they were the lucky ones, though. We had a lot of very heavy showers this summer, which finished off many butterflies. The survivors were mostly a bit worse for wear!

Last month I looked at a few locations along the Yarrow Valley as part of the Northern Brown Argus survey. One of the surveys I did was along Lewinshope Rig and the Lewinshope Burn. There I had met a lady who lived two miles further up the valley, who said that there were loads of butterflies along ...

Really interesting Chris, and great photos. It amazes me sometimes that we have any butterflies left at all when you think of all of the perils they face through all their stages of life.

I'm not going to stoop so low as to read the Daily Mail article, but I presume they are referring to the Butterfly Conservation August e-mail newsletter that I received this morning. It says what a bumper year 2018 was and hopes for a repeat in 2019. Presumably it was written before the current weat...

...As I walked back and followed a few Northern Brown Argus trying to get some pictures I estimate that there must have been more than 100 of them there.. Those are excellent numbers, Nick, and you have an impressive range of species in that last report. Are NBAs having a particularly good year or ...

I am looking forward to reading about what you see there Sonomoha. I love to see what butterflies occur abroad, particularly during the winter months when there is little doing here. I have had a couple of lovely holidays in Mauritius and loved the butterflies I saw there. I guess that Mayotte will ...

It is interesting to see the difference a week can make. I visited the little valley above our house near Yarrowford again on the 23rd June. The weather had been sunny in the morning, but was a bit overcast when I arrived there (of course!). This time I saw 40 Northern Brown Argus on my first walk u...

On 15th June I quickly visited the valley above our house near Selkirk. It was 14 degrees and cloudy, but I was hoping that I may find some roosting Northern Brown Argus. My dad told me that he visited this spot one morning and found several Northern Brown Argus roosting on grass stems, so I thought...

" You're giving me ideas Guy :wink: :lol: There was similar story about someone at Aberystwyth Uni; he popped out to get a pint of milk and came home 6 months later having hitched to the Pyrennes, spent several months goat herding and then hitched back :shock: :lol: I reckon I could get away w...

Sounds like a lovely day Wruzel. I had a similar visit to an area near me, but with completely different species!

Interesting. The migration arrived here on the 7th June and they continued to come in from the North Sea for about three weeks, with the numbers only recently reducing. I have never known them to arrive in such numbers. Red Admirals arrived two days earlier, but not in quite the quantity as the Pain...

Fantastic to see that you have been able to return to Switzerland and that you are momentarily amongst all of those special species again. I will have to get there some time to see them.

I don't think the rear wings are scalloped enough to be Oriental Meadow Browns. When I was in Corfu a couple of years ago the Meadow Browns were very variable. Some had markings just like yours, while others had hardly any signs of ocelli on the underside.