UKH

Don’t see many of these, so seeing three today was the highlight. This one was a real beauty. 

I like the first one in particular.

Spotted about a month ago wings open and shut.  

Nice. My phone is best for this sort of stuff. Might have a look in my front garden jungle and see what’s happening. 

Yes, gone are the days of carrying an SLR and giant lens for this sort of stuff.  The change in photography over the last decade is absolutely astounding.

Large white in garden, common blue and gatekeeper in grassy area 1 minute away. 

My large camera was good weight training when I lugged it around for nearly five hours this morning!  Yesterday though,needed it for this rubbish pic of a rarity round here...

Ah! Fork-tailed Butterfly. Quite a few around here now - pair nesting in the woods above the house.

Excellent. Brilliant birds, you’re lucky having them so close. 

Strange how they've done so well in some places and not others yet, I think I see more around my way than any other bird except Blackbirds and Crows, and to think they were down to less than 100 in the entire country at one point (might have been 100 pairs) it's a real success story.

Hoping the white tailed eagles reintroductions manage to succeed even a fraction as well.

Edit: clearly I forgot pigeons, I see more pigeons than anything else but they're not quite as majestic as the Kites!

Probably as common as the buzzard in the locality now. Amazing colours.

I wonder what this is, seen at Wittenham Clumps (Oxfordshire, chalk) today.

Lovely!

https://butterfly-conservation.org/butterflies/marbled-white

Marbled White. got them in the thousands where I work. Been a good year for butterflies. even saw a clouded yellow last month, which is very early in the season for them. 

The blues have an almost made up life cycle. It's always amazed me and makes me think of the pictures in my childhood books of their caterpillars and wondering why I'd never seen one. Now I know!

My manager's husband is the pre-eminent expert on Large Blue butterflies and has brought the species back from extinction in the UK to thriving colonies in (mostly) Gloucester. Their life cycle starts with the caterpillar larvae feeding exclusively on red ant grubs. How do they get into an ants nest? well by first mimicking the behaviour and 'smell' of a red ant grub of course. The ants are tricked and bring it back to the nest, only for the larvae to start eating the brood. 

Nature is amazing. 

And each blue species is parasitic on a few select species of ant, which in turn are dependant on grass length amongst other criteria for their distribution. Which is due to type of grazer. 

It's a fragile world out there. 

Its a Marbled White.

just been watching a couple of red admirals sunbathing on some thistles just below our living room window - almost the first I've seen this year

They're like gulls around here, and they often come down to rooftop height.

I was going to remark earlier that I could probably look out of the loo window and see one or more. But I couldn't. Just sat down on the loo now, and can hear one calling, with its overtone whistle...