Butterfly counting with our wildlife bloggers

Hello everyone, welcome back to our wildlife blog

We've had had a very eventful, busy two weeks, doing lots of butterfly spotting and taking part in the Big Butterfly Count. As you'll see from our pictures, we saw lots of different species, including red admiral, small tortoiseshell, painted lady, speckled wood, large white, brimstone, gatekeeper, large and small skippers, also the beautifully coloured peacock.

When you look closely, the colours on all these butterflies are amazing, they really are tiny works of art. We were also lucky enough to have a visit from a beautiful banded demoiselle damselfly, who decided to sit on our wall for ages before settling outside to have his picture taken. They are a gorgeous metallic blue colour and usually live on small fast flowing rivers. We are very lucky here at the Hub to have lots of wildflowers and areas left especially for wildlife along with a lovely large buddleia bush.

Onto other wildlife, there’s been a lot of activity on the wildlife camera where we've seen visits from muntjac deer, rabbits, squirrels, a hedgehog and a variety of birds. There were a few more on our bird table too, mainly blue tits, great tits and blackbirds, but we were extra pleased to see our friendly little robin, who’s been away lately and greatly missed.

So to finish this week's blog a quick word on how to help our butterflies, and attract them to your garden. A lot of you will have taken part in the Big Butterfly Count and would love to see more of them and be a part of preserving them for the future.

• Provide food through growing plants that flower all year.
• Create warmth by planting flowers in the sunniest spots in your garden.
• Leave fallen fruit on the ground, butterflies love sweet things, the glucose in nectar gives them energy.
• Leave a space to grow wild in your garden.
• And for all insects, birds and animals avoid pesticides.

You can also make your own butterfly and bee feeders, there are lots of ideas on the internet, so get creative and see those beautiful insects flying into your garden soon.

Join us again next time when we'll be bringing you up to date with wildlife here at the Hub and sharing some of Mark's photography from where he lives.

KEEP WATCHING WILDLIFE, AND HELPING WHEN YOU CAN

Bye for now, Helen, Tim, Justin, Mark and Claire