Woke up this morning and the sun was actually shinning, Hooray! It stayed dry all day though later on the blue skies were interspersed with ominous grey clouds and I kept wondering if I should bring in the washing.
Not wishing to waste the good weather, after a leisurely start I got on with some weeding and later in the afternoon I made a point of taking time to sit and read in the sun. I've done so much rushing around recently that I'm in danger of not enjoying the things we do have here, peace and quiet and beautiful surroundings.
The butterflies were out in force, so many of them that I moved on to looking for interesting shots of several butterflies in each picture.
I think the subtle marbling and the bright colours on the underside of the wings of the red admiral are even prettier than the top colours.
A new butterfly, a small copper. I did take some pictures of a pair of them in a courtship dance but this was my favourite. It is only a small butterfly and was feeding on the lavender flowers.
This was another first for the year, a Comma. It took me quite a while to identify it in my wildlife book because the photo in the book is of the underwings but no other brown and orange butterfly has this distinctive notching. While I was weeding one of the flower beds I disturbed a humming bird hawk moth. It was resting on the leaves under the bush where I had seen one last year. Maybe it had been hibernating there since last year?
While I was enjoying my reading time up in the scree garden (and being distracted by butterflies) there was an awful lot of twittering coming from the swallows' nest. Even when the adult was flying outside the minute it gave a chirp the noises began anew. I crept into the outbuilding with my camera and hopefully didn't shock the fledglings too much as I used the flash several times to get a couple of pictures of them. Only 2 little heads were peeping over the edge, I wonder if that's all there are this year?
Not wishing to waste the good weather, after a leisurely start I got on with some weeding and later in the afternoon I made a point of taking time to sit and read in the sun. I've done so much rushing around recently that I'm in danger of not enjoying the things we do have here, peace and quiet and beautiful surroundings.
The butterflies were out in force, so many of them that I moved on to looking for interesting shots of several butterflies in each picture.
I think the subtle marbling and the bright colours on the underside of the wings of the red admiral are even prettier than the top colours.
A new butterfly, a small copper. I did take some pictures of a pair of them in a courtship dance but this was my favourite. It is only a small butterfly and was feeding on the lavender flowers.
This was another first for the year, a Comma. It took me quite a while to identify it in my wildlife book because the photo in the book is of the underwings but no other brown and orange butterfly has this distinctive notching. While I was weeding one of the flower beds I disturbed a humming bird hawk moth. It was resting on the leaves under the bush where I had seen one last year. Maybe it had been hibernating there since last year?
While I was enjoying my reading time up in the scree garden (and being distracted by butterflies) there was an awful lot of twittering coming from the swallows' nest. Even when the adult was flying outside the minute it gave a chirp the noises began anew. I crept into the outbuilding with my camera and hopefully didn't shock the fledglings too much as I used the flash several times to get a couple of pictures of them. Only 2 little heads were peeping over the edge, I wonder if that's all there are this year?
