What chance of attracting common blue or small copper?

[Medard]

Hello Matthew good to hear you have had a common blue visit you, late afternoon I had this male Common Blue that sat and posed on a Lavender sprig.

Other species seen yesterday
one Brimstone
one Small White, the first since Spring
Several Large Whites and an elusive Red Admiral visited from time to time.

Where are all the insects?
Last year the Eryngium plants were buzzing with insects, as many as twenty odd species but to date almost zero, a few Bumbles and Honey bees but low by previous years observations
however this insect was an exception and a new species in the garden ,can someone identify it please

I include a once in a lifetime plant in flower Agave victoria reginae, note, Agave is monocarpic, so the parent plant will die after blooming. flower spike1890 mm at the moment.

[Matthew Pierce]

Hi Medard - Good photos again. I think your mystery insect might be a four lined horsefly Atylotus rusticus. To your point about the abundance of insects this year, at the moment I have plenty of honey bees, odd bumble bees, lots of hedge brown butterflies. Earlier in the summer I had good numbers of various small beetles, hoverflies and shield bugs etc on my wildflower patch, but I'm not seeing many of these at the moment. Not sure if the hot and dry conditions have something to do with it?

[Matthew Pierce]

Another common blue today - a female this time - I saw it flying about and managed to get a good look when it settled briefly on a white clover. I thought I saw it earlier over my wildflower patch, so I hope it found the bird's foot trefoil I have carefully cultivated.

Great to see!

Cheers,

Matthew

[Medard]

Hello Matthew, thank you for identifying Atylotus rusticus , I confess that identification of insects is not my strong point.
https://jamesgibbs6929.zenfolio.com

A few visitors to the garden undeterred by the heat.
A minute bee gathering pollen in "panniers" that seemed oversized for the bee.

A damselfly the first one seen in the garden

A second Skipper, can't imagine how it found its way to the garden, the nearest Skipper colony is three miles off.

Not the first Gatekeeper but an in frequent visitor, seen sheltering from the heat in bushes.

Yesterday afternoon a handsome male Common Blue came to visit 19-07-2022

[Matthew Pierce]

Doing some work in the garden today and saw a flash of orange as a small butterfly flew past. It turned out to be the hoped-for small copper which soon homed in on a sorrel plant and laid an egg.

Unfortunately, by the time I had gone inside, picked up my camera and returned, the butterfly was gone. I did get this photo of the egg though:

Pleased with that as I had planted the sorrel with this species in mind. It was rather surprising as I visited a lot of local sites doing Big Butterfly Count reports this summer and the closest small copper was more than two miles away.

[David M]

Excellent, Matthew! So pleased you did it...and what a fine looking egg it is too!

By the way, after having never seen a Common Blue in the gardens where I live, I've spotted FOUR this last month or so. Must be the hot weather!

[Matthew Pierce]

Hi David - thanks for your kind words! Yes, I was amazed at the intricate structure of the egg - quite extraordinary really.

I had the same experience as you with common blues this year, seeing several over ten days during the hot weather in July, never having seen one here before. I also saw a couple of first-ever marbled whites, so it has been a rewarding summer so far in my garden.

[Matthew Pierce]

I thought I would bring this thread up to date. Last season (2022) I had several visits from common blues during the hot weather in July, and then an egg-laying small copper at the end of August.

Of course this year I was hoping for better numbers of these two species, but so far I have only seen two or three of each and they have not hung around in the garden. My wildflower areas look like this:

Both areas contain bird's foot trefoil and sorrel. The second area also contains some wild marjoram which yesterday attracted another small copper:

I also had my first ever brown argus in the garden the other day, so I'll take that as a good omen...!

[bugboy]

If you've not already done it, you could scatter some Yellow Rattle seeds in your wild patch. It's not a food source for anything but it is a semi parasite on grasses, latching onto their roots with its own to steal nutrients, and in doing so stops the grasses from growing too vigorously which in turn allows the other plants that will attract butterflies to flourish.

[Matthew Pierce]

Hi bugboy, thanks for your comment.

I do have yellow rattle (e.g. in the second photo) but it is hard to see having now gone to seed. That patch is looking the most promising of the various areas I have seeded over the last four years, in that the grass is not too vigorous and there is a good variety of wildflower species (some still to flower as it is only year 1).

In some of my early efforts (e.g. in first photo) I think the ground was too fertile and I didn't have yellow rattle either, the result being dominance of tall grasses and tough wildflowers like knapweed and oxeye daisy, with smaller species like bird's foot trefoil mostly crowded out.

What I haven't got anywhere is low growing wildflowers on semi-bare ground, which is what the common blue and small copper would probably prefer. I may yet get there as in a couple of lawn areas where the yellow rattle is going well, the grass definitely seems to have taken a knock.