Butterfly Decline

We've worked very hard in our new garden to bring on the insects', and particularly the butterflies' favourite foods in time for summer, with some success: verbena, toadflax, lupins, buddleia, and many more are flourishing yet, in weeks of waiting, not a single butterfly has appeared and....

....only a few bees and hover flies. Recent weather can't be blamed, it's been perfect, warm, with sunny intervals and light breezes, although July as a whole has been unusually cold.

It's been a terribly depressing wait, the more worrying as our favourite paper, The I, had a letter in it recently from a correspondent who reported the same dearth of insects in his garden. The only local butterfly which is doing well is the speckled wood, of which Mrs MW reports good numbers in Speckled Wood.

Happily, our patience was finally rewarded this morning when we had an unexpected visitor, a small copper, followed shortly after by....

....a tortoiseshell.

I have been saying this for a long time: there is something terribly wrong in our precious insect world, and their loss, if we would only acknowledge this decline, would be a disaster.