On a much brighter note compared with Nature Notes of two weeks ago, finally around mid-July our so, so soggy summer pulled up its soaking wet socks and presented us with some beautiful hot sunny days.
I’m walking through a wonderful meadow in Morden Hall Park where a myriad colourful wild flowers grow.
Butterflies reacted immediately too with small tortoiseshell, red admiral, comma, peacock and marbled white all fluttering around and on the wild flowers joyfully grateful for the sun at last.
If we include the dainty orange tip and rare wood white there are five species of white butterfly in Britain, the others being large white, sometimes called cabbage white, plus the small green-veined all on the wing from April throughout the summer in two or three broods, weather permitting.
None of the white species hibernate and spend the winter in the chrysalis stage.
The large white is our only so-called pest species, laying large batches of eggs underneath cabbage leaves.
Years ago, we would see large swarms of the species but very few nowadays due to the depredations of a virus which reached Britain from the continent way back in 1955, from which it has never fully recovered.
Add to that the increasing use of harmful pesticides, all butterflies bees and other insects have much to contend with.
Some years ago, I won a limerick competition which seems appropriate to repeat below:
A farmer once tried all he might
To rid his crops of the large white
Day and night did he toil, til he poisoned the soil
And his cabbages died, serves him right
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