Thanks Goldie - glad you’re finding the updates of interest. It was indeed a shock - I hadn’t seen one until then - an unusual first encounter! I’ll give you T-bone Frank @20-1 Wurzel. I pay out at pupation. If I lose him at L5 it’s money back, any time before then we assume predation and you lose y...

Great to see you at Whitehawk Dave - perhaps it was your last visit as the season was definitely coming to a close. It’s becoming a great end of season meet up - if we could just squeeze a pub in somewhere it’d be perfect. Maybe this year.....

Lovely writing as usual Wurzel.

If you’re anything like me (probably you’re a much better son!) then it was prob a good job the butterflies were underwhelming - it’s impossible to be good company when your attention is pulled away with every flash of an unidentified lep!

Great to see what you found around the waterworks Paul - it used to be my final destination on my daily pram walk - if I timed it right the baby would be just nodding off by the time I arrived at my favourite waterworks bench - 30 mins (an hour on a brilliant day) of peaceful heaven would follow! Th...

Well I’ll go for the Small Heath - so easy to overlook but look at that colouring - lovely photo.

Just so it’s not all hibernating caterpillars, I’ll mix in other interesting bits here and there. Spending so long amongst the foliage I do tend to encounter other woodland wildlife that I would normally miss altogether. One such encounter was with a delightful dormouse when out searching for autumn...

Thanks for your very encouraging comments Neil, Trevor and David. A quick report on losses for December. A good start with only 2 (of the named 20) missing. There is always the possibility that they relocated, and I have overlooked them, but I search thoroughly enough for this to go down as a bit of...

Enjoying the retrospective David, and with the spring focus yours is particularly appetite-whetting! Fingers crossed for the coming months, both at home and further afield.

Cheers,

Ben

Superb reporting as always Neil. I should have come and seen that Clubtail but I think I was glued to an L5 caterpillar at the time - hoping to watch it journey off to pupate. Really interesting summaries of the iris season from Matthew and yourself. Hard to see 2021 being better than 2020 (in terms...

Some superb shots this year Trevor, on your PD and on Facebook. I missed many species for one reason or another so really good to see the efforts of others. No doubt cross paths for some spring species soon!

They got the Black-veined White right - 1 out of 4 ain’t bad.

Thanks for that Pete and David - The boy Deontay will be my second case study. One of the early finds back in November 2019 and representing something of a breakthrough in terms of understanding this particular iris breeding ground. When I first began searching for immature stages I sought out suita...

And that was PBF ‘part 1’! Whatever next - a couple of hundred spelling out ‘long live Hulme’ amongst the bugle perhaps?

Seriously though - what a spectacle and congratulations to all involved.

I’m glad this is doing well Jason - always a good read.

Great shots of a stunningly fresh individual on the 26th Dave, and interesting to see the wear on the same butterfly in Paul’s photo a few days later (I presume). I think we were all taking turns with the same few in Chiddingfold around that time - but I certainly didn’t manage anything as good as t...

Please let me know if the photos don’t display properly BTW - I’m using some hastily downloaded compression app and I’m not convinced I’m choosing the correct options! Really need to get a laptop. Thanks!

Thanks for the warm welcome folks - really glad to know that a diary so limited in scope will still be of interest to some. Before I report on losses (always a somewhat depressing task) I’ll take the latest lockdown as an opportunity for a case study or two. As I’ve already linked to a video of her ...

Time to dive in and start a diary. I’ll kick it off with my favourite butterfly related quote from one of my favourite authors (I don’t know many TBH - I’m not well read). “I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the ...

Try again...

Superb - thanks David