Today was a pretty special day for butterflies despite my putting in no effort to see them as the day was taken up with chores and family things. The first one I saw out of the kitchen window this morning was a beautiful painted lady on the honeycomb buddleia. There were also plenty of peacocks, small torts, large and small whites and the odd comma around.
Late morning I took the woofer for a walk to our local spot and across the field I spotted a clouded yellow, before I was able to get close it flew over the hedge and away. Flying around the oak, ask and blackthorn trees though there was a purple hairstreak and brown hairstreak which made up for the loss.
When I got home from the dog walk I was hanging out some washing and watching the butterflies flying around, including a couple of holly blues, when a silver washed fritillary came gliding in. This well worn lady was acting pretty strangely and didn't seem particularly interested in the flowers unlike the other butterflies. I didn't understand her behaviour at the time, but thanks to this website I read the following section of the page relating to silver washed fritillaries and it all made sense "Egg-laying females can be seen flying over the woodland floor searching out the larval foodplant, Common Dog-violet. They will sometimes alight on the woodland floor and crawl among the vegetation to determine the suitability of the site. If a suitable location is found, then the female flies to a nearby tree trunk and lays a single egg in a chink on the tree bark and several eggs may be laid on the same tree. These are typically laid on the moss-covered north-facing side of the tree and between 1 and 2 metres from the ground. It is believed that such a location provides a suitable “microclimate” for the overwintering larva."
She was sitting on various shrubs and then flying down to the ground and disappearing into the undergrowth. At one point she sat on the fence panels for a while. I thought this odd as she did look like she was wanting to lay but as I knew the larval food plant is dog violet I didn't understand why she was on other things. I went to get my camera and I got a short clip of her sitting on the ivy. I was quite concerned at the time as I thought she was caught in a spider's web and was going to extricate her but as I got closer she flew off so obviously wasn't trapped. If you put the clip on wide screen and look at the abdomen I think she is considering laying an egg.
I had promised to take my daughters shopping so I had to leave the excitement in the garden but by late afternoon I was home again and hanging out more washing. Something else caught my eye as it flew into the garden. I thought it was a common blue or brown hairstreak initially but on closer inspection it turned out to be a female purple hairstreak and she really tucked into the hemp agrimony and didn't seem to be bothered much by my being there.
