Home sweet home

After just over a week away, it's good to be home to see what's going on. I was thrilled to find my copy of BBOWT's Wildlife News (the membership magazine) waiting for me on the doormat. It includes a piece I wrote about some autumn highlights of some of my favourite local reserves. A couple of my photos were used as well. You can read the magazine online here and my bit is on page 6.

My wellies photo was also used in the cover letter for the magazine, plus the editor included a nice plug for the blog (thanks!)

In the back garden, you don't notice how much everything grows at this tome of year unless you're away for a few days, then you come back and it suddenly looks like a jungle. That's certainly the case with our back garden!

The buddleia is covered in huge deep purple flower spikes, which are finally attracting some butterflies. Even though it's been quite windy all day, I've just seen a brimstone, peacock, red admiral, 2 gatekeepers, small white and 3 large whites out there. It feels like it's been a very poor year for the butterflies so far, so it's wonderful to see some in the garden. It's the last week of the Big Butterfly Count, so I'll log the butterflies I saw on the website at http://www.bigbutterflycount.org/.

Brimstone

 

Large white

Last spring we planted some dark mullein seeds to try and help the very rare striped lychnis moth. The plants have flowered this summer and are doing really well. Unfortunately no sign of any striped lychnis caterpillars yet, but we'll keep looking for them. Doesn't really matter, as the flowers are very pretty and the bees and hoverflies seem to love them.

Dark mullein

Another plant that's taken over a year to flower is the teasel. It's in flower now and always seems to have a few bees with their faces buried in it. When the flowers go to seed, the goldfinches will love it!

Loving the teasel

And finally ... Bug Mad Girl painted an owl this morning!