This was one of the most emotive scenes of the summer for me and just had to be nature journalled. I went out for a little recce after the showers cleared and felt very emotional watching this female Common Blue butterfly flutter across the dead grasses desperately trying to find some Bird's Foot Trefoil to lay her eggs on. It was such a bleak sight amidst the parched meadowplants. Hopefully the pond provided an oasis for her. I pray she succeeds and that nature finds a way through.
Blog
I blog about nature in the Norfolk countryside and about my wildlife garden. My blog blends digital photos with an analogue nature journal.
Nature journalling blends nature observation and citizen science with a written diariy or art journal to build a deeper connection with nature and cultivate curiosity, creativity and flow.
Small Tortoiseshell butterfly
Was this Small Tortoiseshell a late first brood or early second brood? So many questions arose when I was drawing out the Small Tortoiseshell's lifecycle calendar diagram...
A Painted Lady Year
I wonder if it will be a “Painted Lady” butterfly year…
Butterfly Wings
Butterfly wings are covered in overlapping scales made of chitin. Its stretched like a membrane over a hollow tube framework called verris that carry hemo lymph, air and nerve signals to the wing. Covering the membrane are thousands of tiny scales that overlap like roof shingles. Each scale has long, parallel struts joined to each other by lots of fine ridges creating a lattice.
April Garden Safari
Peacock Butterflies, Dunnocks and Bird Cherry blossom. I sat out again and spotted a Dunnock busily foraging and flying to the Ivy covered hedge. She must be feeding young in a nest there !. Weather cooler and it turned windy, quite stormy by lunchtime.
Brimstone Butterflies
I book a trip to Norwich today. It was unseasonably warm and beautifully sunny- the first really lovely springtime day. Along the way I saw not one but 7 Brimstone butterflies! Brimstones have quite large, leaf-shaped wings and hibernate over winter. The males have bright lemon colored wings and the females greenish white-cream wings. Larvae feed on Buckthom and Alder Buckthorn. They always rest with their wings closed. They are widespread as Buckthorn is found on calcareous soils and Alder Buckthorn on moist acid soils. Therefore they are rated as being of “Least Concern" on the GB Red List (2022). From 1976-2019 they've become 22% more abundant but -3% less widely distributed. One possible origin for the word "butterfly" comes from the colour of the male brimstone butterfly.
Weather Wheel September 2025
September saw some beautiful, still, sunny days with the air rich with the scent of over-ripe apples and Wood smoke. Plenty of insects still around especially dragonflies, grasshoppers and spiders. Still spotting butterflies. Mostly whites, Small coppers and Red Admirals.
Comma Butterfly
Polygonia c-album - Comma
A regular visitor to my garden
Caterpillars will feed on Hops and Nettles, but also Currants, Elms and Willows
Scalloped wings conceal it amongst dead leaves
Larvae look like bird droppings
Flexible life cycle allows it to capitalise on favourable weather
Verbena bonariensis - Purple Top
Non-native
South American
Tall herbaceous perennial
Erect branching stems up to 2m high
Numerous clusters of Small, Lilac-purple flowers
Flowers Summer into Autumn
Excellent for pollinators
Painted Lady Migration
I noticed a Painted Lady bulterfly on my Erigeron and wondered where she had come from?
The Painted Lady has the longest migration cycle known for any butterfly species, reaching 12,000 km over multiple generations.
Painted hady butterflies travel from sub-Saharan African directly into Europe. My butterfly probably arrived from France during favourable wind patterns. Painted Ladies have a lifespan of about a month and travel hundreds of km. They "surf" the wind at Speeds of up to 45 kmph. They follow similar paths every year - but there is variability depending on rain patterns and availability of food. It is likely that they are genetically coded to orientate and navigate given particular environmental conditions.
Jenny Wren and Meadow Brown
Garden safari sightings in early to mid June
7/6/25
Eurasian Wren
11/6/25
Red Kite
Seagulls
Rooks
Wood Pigeons
Collared Doves
Meadow Brown (butterflies)
Small Copper
Small White
Cinnabar
Four-spotted
Chaser dragonkly
Grasshopper
Butterfly Aberrations
A Small Tortoiseshell aberration semiichnusoides butterfly showing merged costal black spots and white marginal streaks instead of blue studs on the forewing and missing the orange band on the hindwings
Our hot late June summer weather didnt last too long, and perhaps could be deemed an aberration in its own right, but it also seems to have had a major impact on our caterpillars while they metamorphosed into butterflies.
I got curious when I spotted this unusually marked Small Tortoiseshell butterfly and discovered a strange world of genetics and temperature driven body chemistry!
The term for a butterfly with atypical variations in markings is “an aberration”, which stems from the latin aberrationem, literally meaning “a wandering”. First used in the 1590s, the modern meaning of “a deviation from the normal type” is attested by 1735.
It takes about 4 weeks for a caterpillar to metamorphose into an adult butterfly in a fascinating “black box” process that science still knows surprisingly little about.
It turns out that both genetics and abnormal weather (and perhaps even the two in combination) can play a role in triggering marking deviations. Aberrations are caused when something interrupts the usual pattern of markings during their development inside the butterfly’s chrysalis. One hypothesis is that sudden temperature “shocks” (in either direction) may trigger melanin release (a dark pigment) to increase or decrease.
Another possibility is the activation of rare inherited “recessive” DNA genes (a gene that requires both parents to have it to be activated) that are atypical because they hinder the chances of an individual finding a mate, or even surviving under normal conditions. They continue however to be carried in the population because they may perhaps aid survival in abnormal conditions.
One example of this is the better known aberration - the dark brown“Valezina” form of the Silver-washed fritillary quite often seen now at Holt at Foxley Woods. Valezina, due to its dark colouration is more able to fly and find nectar in unusually cool temperatures than its typical bright orange counterpart, but which may then be at a disadvantage when it comes to finding a mate and reproducing due to being less readily recognised.
Whether the sudden temperature change we saw at the end of June activated a dormant gene relating to surviving with abnormal weather or coincidentally acted directly on melanin production remains one of the fascinating mysteries of nature.
Small Tortoiseshell Aglais urticae (normal type) vs Small Tortoiseshell (aberration semiichnusoides). Both butterflies are likely to be siblings as they were hosted as caterpillars on my nettle bed and appeared fresh on the same day together.
Last Common Blue Butterflies of the season
What was probably my last butterfly shoot of 2022 happened one evening in beautiful golden light when I spotted not one but four female Common Blue butterflies settling down to roost in a very small strip of our wildflower meadow that we’d decided for the first time was mature enough to leave uncut over winter.
It was a timely reminder to me that the less we humans do to intervene, “control” and “manage” things and the more we resist the urge to “tidy up”, the better chance wildlife has to thrive in our man-made garden, park and urban environments.
Butterflies in particular are vulnerable to disturbance at pretty much any time of year as their eggs, caterpillars or pupae lifestages may all be needing to shelter amongst or feed on plants even when adults are not on the wing. If at all possible, its a good idea to try to leave a section of meadow untouched for a full twelve month cycle at any one time to allow larval stages to overwinter successfully undisturbed.
Nature just isn’t a tidy phenomenon, its chaotic and unpredictable. But the innate human desire for what is ultimately a false sense of control is a perennial urge played out in our gardens and very hard to resist, especially when accompanied by societal pressures of convention and fashion. Over the years this along with the globalisation of plant production resulted in the creatiion of a modern aesthetic that is surprisingly wildlife unfriendly from an ecological perspective, with large showy double blooms with little nectar to offer pollinators, exotic non-native flowers that can’t be used as host plants and monoculture green-baize lawns doused in weedkiller to prevent even a daisy or dandelion, and these days, a great deal of hard landscaping too.
Thankfully the emergence of the wildlife-friendly gardening trend and greater awareness of envirnomental issues is gradually encouraging the development (and revival) of more naturalistic planting schemes and is evolving that traditional aesthetic towards more sympathetic wildlife-friendly designs such as prairie style and cottage-garden planting, low mow flowering lawns and the inclusion of mini wildflower meadows and even wildlife ponds.
After all, who wants a dull old bowling green lawn when the reward is enjoying beautiful wildlife sights like these little roosting butterflies instead!
