When we've had very early vanessids here before, they've preferred winter-flowering heather and hebe to snowdrops, given the choice.

Red Admiral at Rodney Stoke woods (Somerset) today. It was soon after joined by another one and they went chasing off into the woods together.

An extra species for the holiday! I am happy with that...

I note that adrasta is described as a southern/Mediterranean form, and this individual was a long way north in France. Could the form be moving northwards?

The only examples I came across this year were in France, where they were feeding on a species of sunflower. It was strange to be pointing the camera up to take photos of this species as if they were hairstreaks, when in Britain they never make it above knee height.

Thanks folks! I am really losing it if that is Large Wall - I followed it for some minutes as it flew around distractedly before it finally chose to settle, and it never occurred to me then or at any time since that it was anything other than megera - that said, both species fly together in the imme...

Thanks Guy - not sure I'll be able to tell which species after this amount of time. We have one or other of them in the garden, as it happens, but it never gets to flower here, probably because we take too many of the leaves for cooking. Perhaps I should set aside a patch for the butterflies. The ly...

I was admiring much the same moon-and-planets combination from a viewpoint in the Mendips that same evening, though it was a fair bit darker there! Some of my earliest memories are from staying, aged four, at the campsite at Les Grangettes. I don't remember the birds - or the butterflies, for that m...

This wasn't really intended as a butterfly holiday, but I made use of the opportunities that presented themselves and saw some interesting creatures. Western Sarthe We arrived here just after the end of a particularly spectacular hot, dry summer - significantly more so even than in south-east Englan...

Quite a scarce micro in the first picture there as well - Pyrausta nigrata.

Hi Benjamin - that makes good sense - thanks!

I'm posting this with some trepidation here, as you know what you're talking about whereas I don't, but if you've got a hibernating PE larval population of something in the range of 50-200, surely that's too low for it to be worth birds specialising in hunting them down? Even if a single individual ...

Fairly scarce in the garden this year, though this one was around unusually late, on 28 October.

Early in the year (the first photo) and late, but not many in between. As ever, beautiful butterflies.

These are mostly photos of reared adults, immediately after emergence. Larvae spring 2021, emergence mid-April 2022. They flew off and hopefully had happy adult lives.

The first bird I saw in 2023 was a Red Kite - still a rarity around here - a good start to the year!

Wurzel - if you're lucky, you can sometimes see Marsh Fritillary at Priddy, though I'm not sure the butterflies there are truly of wild origin. SPBF also flies there around the same time.

David M wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 3:13 pm Lovely Orange Tips, Paul. Comforting to know they're only three months and a bit away from returning.

Less than 100 days now, by my reckoning. Looking forward to it!

The first of them has now pupated, attached to the ceiling of the rearing-cage.

It's not a rare species, but the only one of its kind in this country. The caterpillars feed on honeysuckle, so if you have that around, they will be about.