AnnMarie's Blog

The sunshine is back! So posted here, are 10 butterflies that you might see if you visit Mid Wales. I photographed all of them at my home in Dyfi forest.

They are:

• Comma – Polygonum c-album
• Small tortoiseshell – Aglais urticae
• Red Admiral – Vanessa atalanta
• Wall - Lasiommata megera
• Small white – Artogeia rapae
• Speckled wood – Pararge aegeria
• Green veined white – Artogeia napi
• Peacock - Inachis io
• Small copper – Lycaena phlaeas
• Painted lady – Vanessa cardui

Just click on a thumbnail below, to start the slideshow (you can pause at any point) :

There are also a good few more butterflies in the area, like: Ringlets, Orange tips and Meadow browns. So if you are ever having a summer afternoon walk in the Corris – Aberllefenni region; keep your eyes open, you never know which butterflies you’ll see.

If you’d like hard copies of these & other pictures – butterfly prints & posters will be available soon from Poster’s Wales. To find out more about British butterflies try the Butterfly Conservation website.

This beautiful moth is extremely well named, on summer nights you might see the male dancing its ghostly dance across your garden. He is trying to attract a mate with his rapidly moving wing beats whilst hovering & darting just above the vegetation.

The scientific name for this moth is Hepialus humuli. The female is more yellowy than the male (who is in both of my pictures here).

I used off camera flash to help me with these shots, manual focusing in the near dark was the trickiest problem.

For a different view, why not take a look at the wildlife trust’s page.

The last few days have caused some interest. An old friend kindly pointed out this site. Being interested in nature & thinking this an excellent project for Tamsin, we set out on our garden moth survey. Unfortunately the nights were not ideal being rather blustery & wet. We were luckier with the days & were able to identify 4 of the moths that we have and the survey was interested in; including Humming Bird Hawk Moths as pictured below.

Since returning our results for the Survey we’ve seen 2 more moths that they were interested in. Maybe next year we’ll be a bit more organised and set up a moth lamp to help our observations.

Another bit of interest was caused when Jane found a Glow Worm, as below.

The glow worm is actually a beetle. The females, which this one is, display a bright green light from their last three sections, in order to attract the winged males as mates. The glow really is quite bright when seen in dark surroundings. The picture used a little soft torch light to fill in details, otherwise you’d just see a bright green spot