We're well into October now, and I've seen only a small handful of butterflies in the garden this month (a large white, a small white and two speckled woods, to be precise). So it's extremely unlikely I'll see any butterfly species new to the garden between now and the end of the year. So let's take stock of the 'garden species' for 2020!
For context, we have a very small patch of garden in front of the house, which my wife turned from a pretty sterile square of grass into a wild flower meadow last year. Especially the Verbena proved attractive to butterflies.
Our back garden is a bit bigger, and has a Buddleia as the main butterfly magnet.
This speckled wood posed on a Rhododendron leaf, and I must admit I'm pretty chuffed with this picture; probably my best butterfly photo. There's some tension in the picture, almost as if the butterfly is just about to launch itself from the leaf ...
But, without further ado, here's our butterfly garden list for 2020, with a rough indication as to how often we saw each species.
For a small back garden, and an even smaller front garden, seeing 16 species isn't too bad, I think.
Unless you also count our resident pair of 'rusty hawkers' ...
Back to butterflies, depending on how you count, Britain has around 64 species which either breed here or are regular migrants, so that means we saw about a quarter of all British species in our small garden this year. Certainly sets a benchmark for future years!
