Category: David

This bolete was growing on a front lawn last month. I leaned over the garden wall to get the pictures, but didn’t get enough details to work out which bolete species it was.

The large yellow underwing moth is a common species, though this is the first one I ever noticed. It flew into an outhouse, and rested up for a day behind an old spider’s web on a dirty window. It wasn’t caught, and went off that evening.

Gatekeepeers are the most colourful of today’s trio of brown butterflies. The upper wings have large orange patches before turning brown towards the edges. Each forewing black eye spot has two white dots, and there are smaller eye spots on the upper surface of the rear wings.

Meadow browns are predominantly a dull brown colour, but with an orange patch towards the front of the forewing. The black eye spot on the top and bottom of each wing has a single white dot in it.

Three members of the brown family of butterflies for today’s posts. All have eye spots on their wings to try to scare off predators. All are about the same size and have similar silhouettes.

Ringlets are brown in colour, sometimes darker and sometimes paler. They seem to spend most of their time flitting around even if no-one is near, but especially if someone does approach them. So it is rare that they stay still long enough to get a good look at them to see the somewhat indistinct markings clearly.

They have multiple eye spots on the under surface of the wings, but just vague darker areas above.

Seen by the side of the canal towpath near Castlecroft, tow plants, each some sort of umbellifer, with foliage which was red.