Hillier Gardens, again

So far this season, we've seen seven butterfly species in the garden, and one damselfly (large red) on Southampton Common, but we haven't yet actually gone out specifically on a butterdamseldragon trip. And we felt that the start of the May bank holiday would be a nice occasion to go to Hillier Gardens again, and see what we could see. After all, we'd been there last year, not once, but twice, and it gave us a good haul of butterfly species (10 to be precise).

Weather was cool, but dry (until just before we left), and the sun did come out a few times. Once that happened, and the air noticeably warmed up, some butterflies did come out to play: a few orange-tips, several small whites, and a single speckled wood.

Not nearly as many species as last year, but the speckled wood was one we hadn't seen there before!

Of course, we also checked the ponds several times during the day for damselflies and dragonflies, but no luck ...

So here the table usually given at the end of a blog post reporting on a butterdamseldragon trip (one  = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):