Bentley Wood

We'll have two weeks of annual leave coming up in the second half of this month. Often during annual leave, we go for long walks, which we love to do. But this year, there is the whole new dimension of trying to spot and identify butterflies! 

As a foretaste of these upcoming butterfly walks, we decided to go to Bentley Wood today, a mature woodland known for its purple emperors and white admirals. We were very much aware that we were very late into the flying season of both these species, and that they're not easy to see at the best of times, spending most of their life in the tree tops. But, nothing ventured ...

It was a very warm day, and we walked for nearly five hours. I lost count of how many tree tops we scoured through our binoculars, but, alas, no purple emperors, no white admirals ... 

But what did we see? A total of nine species, one of which (ringlet) was new for us. We saw many speckled woods, gatekeepers and brimstones. 

One Buddleia bush gave us a few peacocks and red admirals, which we didn't see anywhere else in the forest. And we saw several silver-washed fritillaries! This species was not new for me, as I'd already seen one in our garden earlier this summer, but it was new to my wife.

With nine species, I feel our very first butterfly walk is a success. Below is a table of the species we saw, with an indication of their frequency (one  = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+).