Butterflies in the garden

Now that I'm starting to do some serious gardening again, I am trying to think what plants and garden features are beneficial to resident and visiting wildlife. In this post, I am going to focus on butterflies. I like to observe wildlife including butterflies and often record what I see using either iRecord or during the Big Butterfly Count. Here, I will use the photos taken in the garden and elsewhere to identify which plants are attractive to butterflies.

Gatekeeper - making the most of July warmth.

Many of my photos show butterflies basking in the sun - on sunlit leaves, fences, grasses, rocks, bare earth etc. So places where they can find warmth are important.

The summer banquet

The Butterfly Conservation people have a page on Gardening with butterflies in mind.  They list the best plants for summer nectar and these are very much in line with my expectations. One of the more useful hints is to plant nectar rich plants in sunny parts of the garden.

Peacock on Verbena Bonariensis - July

One of the plants they recommend is Verbena Bonariensis, which also comes right at the top of my personal list of flowers attractive to butterflies. This is consistent with the results of a more general survey I did in 2014.

Holly Blue on Marjoram - July

Another summer favourite is wild Marjoram.  The browns seem to particularly attracted to this plant if it is growing close to long grass.

Snacking through the rest of the year

Small Copper on Aster - September

As the days shorten and the summer flowers fade away, Asters and Sedums are a good source of nectar.  Butterflies will also feed on fruit. The Natural History Museum page - How to attract butterflies to your garden - suggests putting fruit on the compost heap for them. Our compost heap is in a shaded corner, so I drop overripe or fallen fruit into a sunny patch. I've sometimes seen Red Admirals feeding on it.

Red Admiral on Mahonia - November

On the subject of Red Admirals, these can be seen flying during the winter months and are likely to need a winter snack. Mahonia is very popular with these butterflies and many other pollinators. Be sure to get the type with the long spikes of flowers that bloom during the winter months. Avoid the type that blooms in spring when there is plenty of other food around.

Brimstone on Sweet Violets - March

Butterflies will take nectar from early spring flowers such as Violets.  Many will visit Blackthorn blossom and Lesser celandine but these two are thugs that will swamp garden plants.

Speckled Wood on Bowles Mauve Perennial Wallflower - May

The Perennial Wallflower, Bowles Mauve, appears on the Butterfly Conservation summer nectar list andit starts flowering in April and so bridges the gap between the early spring flowers and the classic, summer butterfly flowers.

Caterpillars need to eat too

Peacock on Stinging Nettle - June

Sorry, I'm a bad nature lover and have no intention of having a nettle patch in our garden. Luckily our neighbour doesn't cut the nettles in his parking area and I think this is where our steady supply of Red Admirals and Peacocks comes from.  The Butterfly Conservation gardening page links to a list of food plants (pdf) and the Natural History Museum page advises allowing your garden to be wild around the edges. I suggest wild corners rather than edges. The difference between a wildlife-friendly garden and a mess is tidy edges, a prominently positioned log pile and a bird box.

Metamorphose in peace 

Green-Veined White on Garlic Mustard - I check old stems before composting

When a caterpillar is changing into a butterfly it protects and disguises itself in a pupa. They hide away in all sorts of places so be careful what you clear away. I cringe whenever I think about the way that I used to carefully leave Garlic Mustard (Jack-in-the-Hedge) as a food plant for Orange Tip and Green-veined White caterpillars and then cleared away the stems that probably had pupa attached.

Do butterflies dream of electric flowers?

I don't know if butterflies sleep but they do need somewhere hide away at night. If I brush against our hedge as I pass it first thing, a cloud of brown and orange butterflies - Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers - appears.  While taking evening walks along the A45, which runs alongside a hotel I regularly stayed in while at Birmingham, I saw Large Whites disappear into the canopies of trees alongside the road. So hedges, shrubs and trees provide butterflies with useful shelter.

Next steps

I think we are doing reasonably well with our butterflies but I need to focus more on caterpillar food plants. Of those mentioned in the Butterfly Conservation (pdf) list, we have all sorts of rough grasses, Bird's Foot Trefoil, Garlic Mustard, Violets, Blackthorn, Sorrel/Dock, Holly and Ivy. This means I have both butterflies and food plants. The next step is to find out if the butterflies are breeding in the garden - and that means getting down on my hands and knees to find caterpillars.

Blue Tits in Uckfield

This morning, Kevin of Potter's Books arrived with some treasures - nature and local history books. As it was a grey morning and snow was falling I decided to look at one of my books - The Blue Tit by Martyn Stenning.

The Blue Tit - Martyn Stenning

It is a specialist book with all sorts of fascinating information about Blue Tits including research on Blue Tits breeding in The Woodland Trust's Lake Wood, Uckfield along with detailed results and analysis.  I haven't had time to do more than graze through it so far but it sent me spinning off into my own records and photos.  My photos aren't great but I was pleased to be able to capture these lively little birds at all.

Blue Tit posing prettily on our birdtable - 13 January 2013

I find Blue Tits very endearing. They pose prettily on our bird table, nest obligingly in the box on the back of the house and surely butter wouldn't melt in their innocent little beaks?

Maybe they're not so cute if you are a rival or a threat. Just before Christmas I was shocked to see two Blue Tits having a brawl in the feet of a hedge in Hempstead Lane.  Maybe they were fighting over a nesting site? Martyn's book tells us that "securing a cavity will be the male Blue Tit's first move to attract a mate" or maybe, at a time when food was scarce, they were competing over some tasty morsel. A couple of the country names listed in Mark Cocker's and Richard Mabey's Birds Britannica, "Billy biter" and "Tom bitethumb" reflect their feisty nature.

At our nest box - 27 Mary 2007

I've got so used to seeing Blue Tits nesting in bird boxes that it was a surprise when David, chairman  of the Uckfield Nature Reserves Supporters Group, pointed out parent birds going in and out of a crack in the trunk of a big old tree in Uckfield Town Council's West Park Local Nature Reserve. I simply hadn't thought about what Blue Tits did before man invented bird boxes! Now I find myself wondering if they are descendants of any of the birds that featured in Martyn's Lake Wood studies.

Fledgling with yellow gape round its beak - 27 May 2011

When a Blue Tit family is resident in the box on our wall, we never have to worry about caterpillars eating our plants because the parent birds are constantly scouring the garden for nice, soft prey to feed their chicks.  Those little mouths are sign-posted with a bright yellow gape as shown in the photo above.

I was astounded when I read, in Martyn's book that they hatch " ... more often very early in the morning ... so the hatchling can feed sufficiently to double its weight from roughly one gram to two grams during the first 24 hours out of the egg shell." I find it remarkable that they can grow so quickly but also that everything is so well synchronised with the hatching matching the time that there are caterpillars to feed on.

The Blue Tits that nest in our box always seem to fledge when I am away but in 2007 they left the nest on a Sunday and I seemed to spend most of the day watching them and shooing off the neighbours' cats.  On the 27 of April, fledglings started coming out of the nest just before 9:30am. I still remember the parent bird calling them across the garden from a tree.

Fledgling hiding in bonsai - 27 Mary 2007

• The first three got off quickly. These little bundles of fluff tumbled rather than flew from the box. They fluttered and ran across the garden until they reached a conifer. From there, I think they more-or-less parachuted to the Oak.
• Unfortunately the fourth fell in the pond. Although I got it out and put it on the bird table, the parent bird would have nothing further to do with it.
• The last two came out about 5 pm. They both fluttered to the ground and ran across the garden until they encountered an obstacle, which they would then climb to use as a launch pad for the next part of their journey.  It was fascinating to see them climb our wall with their surprisingly large feet.

Now, at the end of a snowy March, I'm hoping to see Blue Tits inspecting our box so the whole cycle can start again.

West Park Local Nature Reserve - Species

Just before Christmas, I wrote about the species that I have observed in the Hempstead Meadow Nature Reserve. Now it's West Park's turn.

Amphibians and Reptiles

I've not observed any amphibians or reptiles in West Park but plenty of people have seen frog spawn near the pond.  iRecord shows two records for Common Lizard in 2015.

Birds

Goldfinch - 9 April 2017

We (The Uckfield Nature Reserves Supporter's group) have gone on a number of bird walks, led by David. I have recorded the following species but we saw and heard more.

Common name	Species
Sparrowhawk	Accipiter nisus
Swift	Apus apus
Grey Heron	Ardea cinerea
Buzzard	Buteo buteo
Goldfinch	Carduelis carduelis
Blue Tit	Cyanistes caeruleus
Great Spotted Woodpecker	Dendrocopos major
Robin	Erithacus rubecula
Pied Wagtail	Motacilla alba subsp. yarrellii
Great Tit	Parus major
House Sparrow	Passer domesticus
Chiffchaff	Phylloscopus collybita
Magpie	Pica pica
Dunnock	Prunella modularis
Bullfinch	Pyrrhula pyrrhula
Goldcrest	Regulus regulus
Nuthatch	Sitta europaea
Wren	Troglodytes troglodytes
Blackbird	Turdus merula
Song Thrush	Turdus philomelos

On one of our walks last year, David pointed out Bluetits going in and out a hole in a tree. I am so used to seeing them in nest boxes, it is strange to see them using a natural nesting place.

Flowering Plants

Bluebells and Oak - 14 May 2017

There are many flowering plants in the reserve including many blossom trees such Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Wild Roses.  I've only recorded a handful and have taken beauties such as the Oak and Bluebells, shown in the photo above, for granted. Looking at iRecord, it is clear that a much more detailed survey was done in 2015 by Ben Rainbow, which yielded over a hundred species including those two.

Mystery tree - a pear? - 9 April 2017

During the 9 April 2017 walk, we found an intriguing blossom tree.  The flowers were familiar but too big for one of the trees we expect to find flowering in April.  Scouring our books didn't really help and it was only when I found a very similar tree in Leatherhead that I began to suspect that it might be an ornamental pear. I didn't find any pears in the Autumn but I may have missed them.

Fungi

Velvet Shank - 22 October 2017

Many of the fungi that I have recorded in West Park were observed by a group that did a fungi hunt on the 22nd of October 2018

Common name	Species
Jelly Ear	Auricularia auricula-judae
Clouded Funnel	Clitocybe nebularis
Shaggy Inkcap	Coprinus comatus
Blushing Bracket	Daedaleopsis confragosa
Velvet Shank	Flammulina velutipes var. velutipes
Clustered Bonnet	Mycena inclinata
Birch Polypore	Piptoporus betulinus
Common Earthball	Scleroderma citrinum
Turkeytail	Trametes versicolor
Candlesnuff Fungus	Xylaria hypoxylon

Insects

Peacock butterfly - 25 March 2017

West Park is home to all sorts of insects, from tiny beetles to showy butterflies and dragonflies.  I found several different types of insect feeding on the glorious Blackthorn blossom in March last year.

Honeybee nest entrance - 28 Jan 2017

One of my favourite finds was a natural Honeybee nest in one of the old trees.  On one of the Autumn walks, David pointed out a Hornet's nest. Fortunately these large, wasp-like creatures are much more laid-back than their smaller, waspy, cousins.

Common name	Species	Taxon group
Cream-spot Ladybird	Calvia quattuordecimguttata	insect - beetle (Coleoptera)
Harlequin Ladybird	Harmonia axyridis	insect - beetle (Coleoptera)
Peacock	Aglais io	insect - butterfly
Small Tortoiseshell	Aglais urticae	insect - butterfly
Orange-tip	Anthocharis cardamines	insect - butterfly
Brimstone	Gonepteryx rhamni	insect - butterfly
Small Copper	Lycaena phlaeas	insect - butterfly
Comma	Polygonia c-album	insect - butterfly
Red Admiral	Vanessa atalanta	insect - butterfly
Emperor Dragonfly	Anax imperator	insect - dragonfly (Odonata)
Honey Bee	Apis mellifera	insect - hymenopteran
Large Red-tailed Bumblebee	Bombus (Melanobombus) lapidarius	insect - hymenopteran
Early Bumblebee	Bombus (Pyrobombus) pratorum	insect - hymenopteran
Common Carder Bee	Bombus (Thoracobombus) pascuorum	insect - hymenopteran
Plain Gold	Micropterix calthella	insect - moth
Cinnabar	Tyria jacobaeae	insect - moth
Meadow Grasshopper	Chorthippus parallelus	insect - orthopteran
	Panorpa communis	insect - scorpion fly (Mecoptera)
St Marks Fly	Bibionidae	insect - true fly (Diptera)
Dark-edged Bee-fly	Bombylius major	insect - true fly (Diptera)

Mammals

The only mammals that I have seen are rabbits but there is clear evidence of the presence of larger creatures.

Spiders

Crab spider - 14 May 2017

With all those insects around, we are bound to find a few spiders. I am not very good at identifying them but was able to record this colourful crab spider.

This is a very brief round up of my own observations. There are many more out there including those from formal surveys and all the people who walk through  the reserve.