Speckled Woods hold their own

Of the three years since I became interested in butterflies and to a lesser extent moths this one has to rank as the worst I can recall. In saying that some species are it appears doing better than others though all are definitely down in numbers this year.     

Speckled Wood in my garden

 One species I have seen and come across more commonly has been the speckled wood butterfly. Yes I have seen them in previous years but this year was the best for them in particular. So overall its been pretty mixed fortunes for butterflies. 

I was even visiting Currys PC World one afternoon when I spotted a speckled wood kind of trapped between the main window of the store and the sliding glass entrance door. Luckily there was a tassimo coffee making machine display which had some plastic cups on it. I helped myself to an empty cup and with a bit of tricky timing was able to catch the butterfly in the cup. I took it outside and across to the hedges surrounding the retail park and released it. 

Unknown to me it landed on top of my baseball cap. I happened to notice the reflection in a shop window as I passed. I took the cap off and tried to return it to the hedge. The wood had other ideas and promptly took off flying over the top of the building I had just rescued it from. Days later I spotted two Speckled woods flying around each other in my own back garden. 

One flew off across a nearby field but the other obligingly landed on a verrigated bush where I was privledged to get some nice photographs of it. This along with a few days later seeing one land on a hedge outside church as the service had just ended prompted me to find out a bit more about these butterflies. I had my phone on me so used that to grab some pics of that individual. It seems the speckled wood uses aphids which turn tree sap into honeydew as their food source. All I can say is there must be a lot more aphids around this year judging by the abundance of the butterflies. 

Speckled Wood in my garden 2

 Its caterpillars live on certain types of grasses with names like cocks foot grass,  false brome etc. It has in a slight way made up for the absence of the small copper butterflies but that was still a shock to my observations of these amazing creatures