What a fabulous week!

The weather warmed up suddenly last weekend and whilst it hasn't been sunny all the time, it's been great getting back into shorts and sandals again after a couple of weeks of cool gloomy weather. I do find myself becoming quite lazy on days like this - although many days were a pleasant kind of warmth as whilst the sun felt very hot, it was nice and cool and fresh in the shade, which was much more apparent than during the summer months. But hey, we never know when it will be the last of our warm weather for maybe six months, so lazing around is not so bad, is it? 

The only sad note this week was the departure of our swallows. It's inevitable but always seems a bit strange when I first notice they have gone as the skies seem so empty and so quiet.  But on the plus side, a little bit of warmth and the Painted Lady butterflies were back, along with many others. I've found some goodies this week, like this groovy caterpillar. It was curled up in one of the large plant saucers that I use as chicken feed bowls. Luckily for it, chickens are at times sensible and don't go near hairy caterpillars!

Sycamore Moth (Acronicta aceris) caterpillar all curled up.

Sycamore Moth (Acronicta aceris) caterpillar - I had to prod it gently with a leaf to
make it uncurl and I didn't see its face until I put it down into the grass.

On Tuesday I went to revisit my Butterfly Walk to collect the seeds of the Greater Burdock that I'd found so covered in butterflies earlier in the summer. There were not many wildflowers about and far fewer butterflies, but plenty of insects were feeding on the ripe blackberries, even though the berries were rather small and not very juicy, due to the dry soil where they are growing. (As an aside, my brother asked me if I remembered us throwing the dry sticky seed heads of Burdock at each other as children. No. Still don't remember this plant.)

Comma (Polygonia c-album), very well camouflaged with their wings closed up like this.

A Green Bottle fly, a female Fever Fly (Dilophus febrilis) and
a Rose Chafer beetle (Cetonia aurata) all feeding from the same blackberry.

And at home a Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria)
feeding on my cultivated blackberries.

It was certainly a(nother!) week for butterflies as I spotted two completely new species in my garden! Both tiny, both 'blues' and I'm amazed that I even noticed them at all, as these tiny little things are so easy to miss in amongst the big showy butterflies that are flitting about on these Verbena flowers.

A male Brown Argus (Aricia agestis).

A male Long-tailed Blue (Lampides boeticus). These butterflies are
migratory and will likely have come up here from the south of France.

Here's one of my favourite hoverflies, the weirdly named and strange looking Heineken Hoverfly, which are abundant right now. Yes the Verbena bonariensis is still a hit with pollinating insects - that and the sedums have been the favourites of many this last week.

Heineken Hoverfly (Rhingia campestris) with its strange snout.

There seems to be some kind of pattern going on here with my cats terrorising my chickens and ducks! Bertie is being a naughty little boy and worrying the hens.

Bwark bwark!

And here are the sound effects in this 13 second video. I've only just figured out how to get them off my Canon camera and be able to view them on my computer (yeah I know but I just haven't a clue where computers are concerned and didn't have the right software installed) so don't expect me to be able to edit them yet. The last few seconds are unnecessary and I wonder if you can guess what happened?!

Some rotten insect bit my foot! lol :-)

I will leave you with yet more butterflies and and whether the forecasted rain ever arrives (so far no luck) I'm getting back into the kitchen for yet more preserving. I'm off to England the middle of next month and want to take jams and chutneys with me as gifts for family and friends!

How many Peacocks (Inachis io) can you fit on one Sedum plant?
Yes, the blur counts!

Oh, one last thing I discovered just this morning after I'd written all the rest. Really annoyingly I've just found two young Swallowtail caterpillars. These are the only ones I've seen other than the four that I raised, so I'm guessing these are the babies of my babies. It's annoying because I don't have time to get them to chrysalis stage before going away.... yet we're going nowhere next spring... so I could have overwintered them and had another chance to see an eclosion earlier next year. Damn!

This one had just had a moult, because its facial markings are very pale
(and I found the skin on the stem as well).

Well I'll just chat to them when I'm in the veg patch instead. :-)

Anyone bored of kittens yet?!

They'll be five months old tomorrow and growing up fast. Thankfully they are still every bit the kitten right now but I know from experience from when Hallie started going outside that most of the playing will be done out there from now on! Hopefully we will have less of a mess of cat toys strewn all over the place indoors (and other things which are not cat toys but they think they are). But I still don't really want them to grow up yet, although it has been lovely and peaceful the last few evenings - and nights - as they have been so exhausted after hours outside they have slept well when they came back in!

Here are a selection of pics taken when they've been outside over the last week or so. 

Bertie sniffing the wind which he hadn't encountered before!

Harry's shadow is beside the cold frame.

Now this one of Harry needs a bit of explaining. He is an oddball who has loved chewing the dried out ends of garlic and onions as I've been bringing them in from the barn. He then progressed to eating the green shoots of spring onions and even eats radish leaves when I leave them in a bowl in the sink in the mud room. So it stands to reason he would discover my chives and start to eat them!

After their first sortie alone, Hallie appeared every other time and they became braver. After that there was no stopping them and they've discovered trees to climb, the ducks (who they haven't actually chased, thank goodness), butterflies to chase, crane flies to pounce on, duck feathers to pretend are mice they have caught and vole holes in the lawn to investigate.

The worried look here is due to the proximity of the lawnmower!

Don't worry, I won't be posting updates every month now, only when I get some good or fun captures of them!
 

Late summer butterflies

About mid August all those many and varied butterflies I was seeing around the place seemed to dwindle somewhat, to be replaced by far too many 'Cabbage Whites'. For us here in Europe that means both Large White (Pieris brassicae) and Small White (Pieris rapae), and to a lesser extent, the Green Veined White (Pieris napi). I'm not sure that the latter are a real pest for brassicas (cabbage family) but I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the caterpillars of these and the Small White, as they are both plain and green. Of course the White explosion coincided with me sowing and growing my brassicas!

However I've still seen a few goodies here and there and in the last week or so it seems like the Whites' numbers have reduced, and suddenly we have a great wave of Peacock butterflies which although common, are so colourful they are always a delight to see. I'm also starting to see more of the usual autumn species such as Red Admirals and Commas.

The Whites have been so numerous that I've literally been swatting the darn things away as I was trying to flick their eggs off my baby kale and PSB! Since planting it out I've watched them lay eggs on it, and not just that, also on my rocket which I have to check when I pick it. They've also been quite promiscuous and I've found them mating all over the place too. I just wish I could get to see all this action with other species!

Cheeky Small White laying eggs on my purple sprouting brocolli!
At least they only lay single eggs.

Multiple eggs laid by the Large White butterfly -
this is on a rocket leaf. No I didn't eat it!

When those ones hatch out you get an invasion as shown on this nasturtium, which they are
welcome to munch. It's grown partially to help keep the caterpillars away from the brassicas,
but also because they are pretty!

There are predators of course, just as there are parasitic wasps which will lay their eggs inside the caterpillars. I didn't interfere when my OH yelled to tell me that a spider had captured a butterfly, just ran for my camera. Below is a female Large White that has been caught in a web, and I may have felt tempted to help had it been a more unusual species of butterfly, but really why should I deprive the spider of a meal? If you want to see more pictures of this spider and the butterfly, I've put the rest of the photos into a little album on Picasaweb here. I know that not everyone wants to see the gruesome stuff and/or spiders though!

Large White (Pieris brassicae) caught by a Cross Orb Weaver (Araneus diadematus).

OK moving swiftly on to prettier pictures! At the time of taking these photos I thought this was a Small Copper and was just taking a few pictures because it was the first one I'd seen in my garden this year. Luckily I checked in my butterfly book and was was really pleased to find that it was actually the far more unusual Sooty Copper, that I'd encountered for the first time on my Butterfly Walk last month. What I'd seen then though was the male, and this is the female, so I'm happy that I've seen both of them as they are quite different in colouring.

A female Sooty Copper (Lycaena tityrus).

Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) - the only one I've seen in my
garden this year, although I saw plenty on the coast at the Pointe du Grouin!

Map butterfly (Araschnia levana) - I've seen precisely three this year.

It seems like the Painted Ladies (Vanessa cardui) left on our last hot day!
Couldn't resist adding this picture of one in the veg patch with leeks in the background.

To be replaced by the equally stunning Peacocks (Inachis io)...

... and Commas (Polygonia c-album).

I'll finish off with a Small Copper that I saw yesterday. Looking back through last year's photos, I didn't even begin to see them until September and they were around through most of October, so there's plenty still to look forward to on the butterfly front. Not to mention sunshine and warmth coming back for a whole week, according to the weather forecasts. I'm going to make the most of it!

Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas) on Sedum 'Autumn Joy'.