January 2006 / October/November / Home/ The garden / Equipment / email / Art Gallery project
Moths seen in the garden to date A-C, D-F, G-M, N-Si, Sh-the end
December 2005
December is now upon us and another year almost gone so it is time to look back before we move into the new year. I was reminded of this as my husband prepared the following article for our Village Magazine about the butterflies he has seen in the garden throughout the past year.
You may remember that last year we put an article in Village Views about numbers of butterflies seen in our garden, this is an update. The basis of the count is the highest number of any species seen together in each week, then all weeks added together.
There are around 26 species of butterfly seen in Essex of which over the years we have spotted 22
As we said last year generally there appear to be less now than in 1991, we only recorded 124 in 2005 which was lower than the 144 in 2004 and compares with 242 in 1991. The largest loss seems to be Small Tortoise Shells down from 62 to 6 this year, whites and peacocks are also down in numbers.
Our 2004 numbers were – Small White 20; Large White 20; Peacock 13; Red Admiral 12; Gatekeeper 13; Holly Blue 15; Comma 2; Meadow Brown 8; Orange Tip 8; Common Blue 1; Small Tortoise Shell 6 ; Brimstone 4; Painted Lady 1, and 1 Speckled Wood.
We saw no Skippers, Ringlets or Small coppers which were present in 2004 but did have 1 Painted lady, not seen in 2004. We recorded more blues than in any previous year.
It would be interesting to know if this confirms or otherwise observations of anyone else with a similar interest.
With regard to moths, Janice records for the Essex Moth Group having acquired a moth trap last year.
There are over 2,600 species of UK moths and she has recorded over 300 this year.
If anyone would like to see the actual recordings he has kept of butterflies in our garden for the past 14 years they are on an Excel file which can be downloaded here.
Art
Gallery project
We are currently raising funds for the 'Fix the Floor Appeal' in our church of St Mary the Virgin, Little Hallingbury. Recently I have been playing with various programmes and photographs that I have taken and tried to make some art photos. These I am prepared to sell on CD for a small sum in aid of the above appeal. Please visit my Art Photo gallery and see if you can help.
January 2006 / October/November / Home/ The garden / Equipment / email /
Moths seen in the garden to date A-C, D-F, G-M, N-Si, Sh-the end