Wildlife photos please

[PyreneesPlot]

Common swallowtail, having a rest after laying eggs on my florence fennel and some self-sown dill! We ended up not eating quite a bit of the fennel last year, until the caterpillars were big enough to move to some herb fennel. Well worth it







. I did see a scarce swallowtail yesterday, but it was in a hurry so no photo ops!

[Verinda]

Oooh just beautiful, I'd love to see a swallowtail, great photos!

[Verinda]

I saw this butterfly a couple of days ago, I spent ages trying to get a good photo of it but it just wouldn't oblige by letting me see its wings, so this is the best I could do. Its one I haven't seen before so I was quite pleased. Its orange with dark spots and it's quite large too. Oh well, it's quite a nice photo even if we can't identify it!

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[Martin H]

Nice. It's one of the fritillaries, perhaps the pearl-bordered fritillary.

[Verinda]

Oh great thank you, it's lovely to have a new butterfly in the garden

[PyreneesPlot]

Eric the Leopard!

He or she should probably be in the pests section, but they are magnificent. Eric is about 200mm.

[Vince G]

If ever there were such a thing as a beautiful slug, then Eric is a veritable Adonis........glad he's your side of La Manche though!!

[Verinda]

Eric really does have lovely markings. I'm feeling more kindly towards slugs this year as for some mysterious reason I've had a lot less slug damage than usual.

[PyreneesPlot]

Swallowtail caterpillar.

This has totally stripped this dill - time to relocate to some wild fennel which is a bit further away from the florence fennel!



It'll get more stripes as it grows.

I'm not sure if it is a scarce or common swallowtail as we see both. The scarce is camera shy/speedy so no pics as yet.

[PyreneesPlot]

Finally just got a picture of the scarce swallowtail. Having followed one around the veg garden, I was distracted by a hummingbird hawkmoth (too fast) and nearly stood on the swallowtail!



And is this a common blue, although mostly brown, feeding on yellow clover and birds foot trefoil?

[mothhawk]

^^^^^ is that exotic or what!? Looks like something from the Rio Mardi gras!

[veggiechicken]

PP you make my Green Veined White look like a very dowdy relation.
Incidentally, many of the White butterflies in my garden are these Green-Veined ones and they are not interested in cabbages - so don't go squashing them by mistake

[mothhawk]

This little chap was in the garden today. it's about half the size of a regular wasp. I think it's a mason wasp (possibly Ancistrocerus trifasciatus)



Apparently they like nesting in tubes, so hollow stems are of interest. I actually first spotted it inspecting my old H/M bee log, which has dry girasole stems in it.

[Verinda]

I saw one of those mason wasps in my kitchen today, it was battling with a spider. The wasp suddenly spun itself round and round so fast it was a blur and the spider let go! So it had an escape plan! I rescued it then and put it outside, so the spider missed out on dinner!

[mothhawk]

The boy bees are out and about. These are red tailed drones on lavender and catnip, taken this morning.