My Garden Walls

[Zonda]

Had two females in the garden this year so far, but was really chuffed to get a male today.

[geniculata]

hi zonda,

you must be proud, and so you should be to share your garden with such a beautiful butterfly!

i have to nip down to barton or keyhaven to see mine.
its the butterfly that i have earliest recollections of as a child in london, we had them in the back allyway behind our garden, and are the species that first started my interest in butterflies, so hold alot of nostalgia for me personaly.

you must be getting some great shots of them now by what you have posted here already.

nice to see your enthusiasm going from strength to strength!

gary

[Zonda]

Thankyou Gary, i have now earned a Dorset Wildlife Trust plaque for my wildlife patch which i shall display on a post in the garden.

[geniculata]

good on ya mate!

gary. ps when do you open for visiting?

[Zonda]

It's only £15 entrance fee....

[geniculata]

blimey you'll be able to retire early on that!

gary

[Lee Hurrell]

Out of interest Gary, where in London was that?

I can't imagine seeing any Walls in the big smoke now....

Cheers

Lee

[geniculata]

hi lee,

well the old family home was in north london, chingford, more specifically it backed onto the hugh reservoir "the girling" which is at the lower end of the lea vally.

as a child my bedroom overlooked the channal system and water authority land, i could watch gooseanders and red breasted mergansers, plus a whole spectrum of waterfowl and waders from my bed in the winter.
i have wonderfull memorys of walls, brown argus, small coppers and common blues along the back ally in what seemed like such long hot summers.
there were even great green bush crickets in a field at the end of the road, although they dissapeared many years ago.

i don't go back now cos its changed so much, but the leavally park is a good spot to look up if your ever in the area.

gary

[Lee Hurrell]

Hi Gary,

That sounds lovely.

I did see a little of the Lea Valley park on a work visit to Tottenham Hale earlier in the year where I saw male Orange Tip and a few whites.

Cheers

Lee

[Cotswold Cockney]

Out of interest Gary, where in London was that?

I can't imagine seeing any Walls in the big smoke now....

Cheers

Lee

They were certainly there in Walthamstow E17 in the 1940s..... ... Saw them in my garden there when I was very small. Plus Comma larvae on the massive Elm at the botton of the garden although I had no idea what they were then.

A rare family trip to Epping Forest a year or so after the end of the war saw more a few yards from the Royal Forest Hotel there. They were flying along a deep drainage ditch and settling to bask on the bright clay sides of the bank. I also saw my first ever Purple Hairstreak in the same place as a female fluttered down from the Oaks and settled on the short grass. My first ever Holly Blue there too.... Settled on the glossy dark green leaves of Ivy growing over an aged tree stump. Vivid rare treat memories for small boy me at a time when the Nation was slowly getting on its feet after the hostilities.

Some many years later, my wife and I took both our sons to that part of East London where we spent our early days. Know what they said ..

What a dump Dad!

Youngsters of today don't know they're born! .... ...Know what though, they were right. Only it was not a dump when we lived there ... quite the opposite and rural in fact ... not now. My sons have grown up in a nice part of the country ~ Gloucestershire ~ however, it is over three decades since I've seen a Wall Brown in my garden or anywhere locally for some considerable time. I get the impression from reading stuff here and elsewhere on the 'net, that its numbers are on the increase in some areas and in fact spreading. Good if it is the case. It was a common sight during my school days ... not now.

My father used to grow Dahlias in our garden. Massive flowers on plants taller than little pre-school me. In late summer ( it was always sunny in those faraway days ) there would be numbers of Red Admirals feeding on them...

I once found an all black Garden Tiger Moth on the side of our coal store ~ all houses used coal then with regular delieveries. My parents were convinced the moth was covered in coal dust or soot ~ parents ~ what do they know. I now know exactly what it was.... a black variety of the Garden Tiger Moth.... surely the most over the top vividly coloured butterfly or moth found in the UK.... magnificent. Not seen one of those in the garden since my eldest son then aged six, found the larvae of one feeding on of all things a Christmas Cactus put outside to toughen up ready for flowering indoors later. Bless him, the boy raised that larva and was rewarded with a beautiful moth a few weeks later.

All great memories for this butterfly and moth enthusiast ~ something always regarded as a bit of an odd interest both then and to certain extent now by many others who simply will never understand.... I was often ridiculed for having such an interest in my school days ...... regarded in the same way as say Train Spotting or Bird Twitching ... must see all those Diesel locomotives in this class this year .... or, photograph fifty butterfly species in a season ... some folks do not have such a keen interest in anything .... is it me, or, they that are missing out? I suspect it is a basic hunting instinct present in many of us that needs an outlet... previous generations hunted with the gun or net ... some still do.

By the way, I like both trains and birds so must really be beyond redemption... there's little hope for some of us ...
..

[Zonda]

I think any interest in the natural world gained at an early age is a great thing, and probably most appreciated on reflection in later life. I love showing my grandchildren the butterflies in our garden, and telling them about the birds that visit. I gained my interest like a lot of country lads with egg collecting, but never did amass many, and certainly not any rarities. By my early teens, i had largely wised up and took up watching birds on the local weir. A bit of a loner in those days, i was also aware that some of the less interested kids frowned upon the practice of watching birds,,, watching wasn't on their agenda. I think there is still a lot of that hunting thing in me, and for 17 years i hunted fungi. Now i'm hunting butterflies, dragonflies, and birds with a camera. The natural world has given me immense pleasure in my life, and i hope that our new generations can have that too. I used to roam the fields in the summer holidays, and it is now even easier to access wild places than it was then. Take the kids out into the country. PS i did a bit of train spotting too.

[Lee Hurrell]

Wonderful memories, both CC and Zonda.

Although I'm only mid 30's I can remember those long summer holidays. My uncle would pick me up in his MG, off we'd go with a flask of coffee and some bread and cheese, either to flowers meadows in the shadow of the north downs where he later recalled seeing me go running off, seeds flying behind me, as I chased an Orange Tip. I remember seeing my first ever Green Hairstreak with him, in a disused quarry. I must have been about 12. Or we'd go to the south downs, particularly Birling Gap, still one of my favourite places in our land. There I saw my first Chalk Hill Blues, Walls, Dark Green Fritillaries and Marbled Whites. I might even get a half at the pub, despite my young age.

As I've posted previously, we have a friend with 4 year old twins and over the last couple of years I've introdcued them to butterflies. They know the common garden species and have even been talking about them at their playgroup! Brilliant.
Zonda's right, any interest instilled at a young age is perhaps more appreciated later, that certainly happened to me. By the time I was 17/18 and had discovered girls and beer etc, butterflies took a backseat for a while. The interest was still there but it wasn't about 3 years ago it came back with a passion, actually just as my uncle had predicted. The same thing happened to him. I was lucky, he was a naturalist and that's where my spark grew from.

Since then of course, what I've learnt from this site and its members about conservation, behaviour, flight times, photography etc cannot be quantified.

Thanks to all of you,

Lee

[Susie]

My kids have no interest in leps at all but something must be rubbing off on them as yesterday my eldest was in town with a group of friends and they came across what I guess from the description was a plume moth. The other kids didn't have a clue what it was but my daughter was definite that she knew and said to them that she had seen enough moths in our fridge to know that it was one!