BUTTERFLIES & MOTHS

What's not to love about these beautiful important pollinating insects we so often see flitting about during the day. I'm not just talking about butterflies either. There are about 130 day-flying moth species found in the UK, which is more than twice the number of butterfly species we have. In fact, there are over 2,500 species of moth inhabiting our island. I hear some of them are just as beautiful as the butterflies, if not more so. I daresay, I'm going to learn more about moths in the coming years.

I definitely started out appreciating butterflies first. There are about 48 species of butterfly that live their complete life cycle in Sussex and I'm proud to say, I've seen all these species. Before I started on that journey, I'd never even heard of a Hairstreak, let alone known there are five species of them. It's been so much fun learning about our different species and photographing them. You can read about my experience in my blog Discovering Butterflies of Sussex.

I guess the next quest will be to see all 60 (or so) species of butterfly that are found in the UK.

Synchronised Flying Brimstones.

It's the female that is the slightly greener of the two above. The male is the buttery yellow colour that most people are familiar with seeing.

Mating Silver Studded Blues.

After looking around for ages trying to spot this rare butterfly, I was thrilled when I finally came across an area riddled with them. All the males were on the wing, desperately seeking out the newly emerged females to mate with. It was a great morning, as I saw several mating pairs, these two on Cross-Leaved Heath (Heather).