Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary With the Bentley Wood Small Pearls now sadly gone I once again had to make the trek to Priddy Pools for my fix of this species. However they seemed to be having a lie-in this year and when Philzoid and I first visited none were found and we had to make up for their l...

Lovely Small Eggar larva - we get these locally in Somerset, with blackthorn and wild rose being the usual foodplants. We don't find it everywhere, but for some reason it's a little more widely distributed here than Brown Hairstreak is.

A queen bumblebee in the garden today, which is ridiculously early for these parts.

I was in Croydon at the weekend and was entertained by flocks of green parrots, at one point flying fast and low just above car height like iridescent green kingfishers.

Thanks folks - I have more photos but they'll require a bit of editing to make clear which Pyrgus is which, if I can work that out. Hopefully in a few days.

The Small Blue is an intermittent garden visitor here. This was the first example since 2020.

I'm trying to take my mind off the vile weather by trying to identify some butterflies from earlier in the year. We spent a few days in the Queyras in early June last year, and have no shortage of photos of Pyrgus to keep me busy. I'm having a go at getting to grips with this genus, but could do wit...

The butterflies aren't bad either. I was there in September 2022 and saw Southern White Admiral, Berger's Clouded Yellow and Great Banded Grayling well within the city limits. The city sits in a bowl of limestone, which looked promising for butterflies and that I wanted to explore, but did not have ...

A few people have mentioned this species' variability - these three are nearly consecutive photos from the Queyras (French Alps) in June.

Winter has its compensations, I suppose.

I hadn't photographed this butterfly before this year, but for some reason this year they decided to be obliging. This one had clearly enjoyed an interesting life, and at least nine months as an adult, but was still in good enough condition to be patrolling an area of garrigue in northern Var with a...

David M wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2023 5:25 pm

Matsukaze wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2023 4:55 pmChristmas decorations with a difference...

Where did you get those, Chris?

https://fearlessflamingo.com/collection ... ecorations

Christmas decorations with a difference...
A very happy Christmas and a butterfly-filled 2024 to you all!

Got my copy of the book today, very useful, as i and a few others will have to search over 45 acres for early stages of Black-veined White in a couple of months, and the lovely photographs are a great help. The map of BVW also shows BVWs used to occur on our site?[in the area, barings taken from th...

A good year for Holly Blues in the garden. This one was being unusually photogenic on 1 September.

Hope you keep well, Jack.

Does the book include the incident where he hauled a dead salmon into the treetops to attract the Emperor?

Lasiocampidae, perhaps Oak Eggar.

Spot the Grayling 2023:
(Noguera, Spain, 1 August 2023).

I'm not sure I saw a British example this year, but they were reasonably numerous in the Provençal garrigue in late April.

Now for something rather different - I came across this gravestone in the churchyard cemetery at Westbury-sub-Mendip (Somerset); there were a couple of other 'Forest Glanvile' graves there too. Forest was the name of Eleanor Glanville's eldest son, the one who went to court to overturn her will. Bei...

Noguera, Spain, 1 August. These were flying around a streamside patch of thistles but were rarely stopping to nectar.