Belated Butterfly Survey

Due to other commitments I haven't written a post about the June survey we did for the STERF Butterfly Atlas project. Well better late than never; so here's the belated post..

The weather had been less than kind and we weren't expecting much but before we got out of the car we realised we'd been mistaken. 


Marbled Whites were coming at us from all angles... We soon realised that the best we could do was make an educated guess at how many we had seen. It was impossible to count them all individually..

This pair of Ringlet were happy to pose for photographs, but not all the butterflies we saw were so obliging! Again, these were plentiful, though not in quite the same numbers as the Marbled White.

We didn't manage to get a 'wings open' shot of what I think may be a Gatekeeper - I await confirmation or otherwise on this one!

However, we were lucky with this beautiful Fritillary, which I think may be the Dark Green Fritillary. The photo showing its underside does make me wonder though....

The Skipper obviously loves Viper's Bugloss. This flower spike had several feeding on it.

From the colourful to the not so colourful now. The underside of this Wall Brown gives good camoflage against the ground cover. With its wings open it would not be nearly so well protected.

 And to end, another photo of the underside of a butterfly. I've included this shot mainly because I think Colin's captured the delicacy and balance of a butterfly perfectly here.

It's a stunner as far as I'm concerned! And my best guess is that it's a Speckled Wood!