Tag: butterfly

First red admiral of the year, seen at a distance, with bonus bee. They travel here from mainland Europe but not in small boats — admirals come in big ships.
A1 is reading Kill the King* and A2 is reading Kill the Angel*, both by Sandrone Dazieri.

Cabbage Whites and Speckled Woodsare the only types of butterfly we have seen this year. Come back Tortoiseshells, Peacocks, Red Admirals, Ringlets and Gatekeepers.
A1 is reading Kill the Angel* by Sandrone Dazieri. A2 is reading The Conspirators by GW Shaw (thx A1).

A Speckled Wood sitting on a cement bag next to a hosepipe. We have 3 cement bags piled on the patio, all set solid and too heavy to move.
July was our third coldest, fourth wettest and fourth cloudiest since our records began.
A1 is rereading The Misper by Kate London. A2 is reading Past Lying by Val McDermid. Detectives in covid lockdown attempt to solve a cold case with the help of an unfinished posthumous crime novel.

We have seen so few butterflies this year that it is a pleasure to welcome this boring Cabbage White flying above our broccoli bed.
A1 is rereading Death Message by Kate London. A2 is reading The Missing Family by Tim Weaver.

A monochrome butterfly on a monochrome fence taken from a long way away, but hey we’ve seen so few butterflies so far this year.
A1 is reading Hunted by Abir Mukhergee, an attempt at a contemporary US-based thriller from AM, who usually does historical crime set in India. Readable but implausible, and yet another entry in the sinister-cult subgenre. Thanks, A2!

Pieris brassicae with another bonus hoverfly.
Admin1 is reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

Maniola jurtina with bonus hoverfly, spotted among the weeds on Admin2’s shopping walk. It’s been nine years since we last spotted one.
Admin2 is rereading Fatherland by Robert Harris.

First Aglais urticae of the year. Must brave the nettles in search of those golden chrysalides.
Admin1 is reading Blue Water by Leonora Nattrass. Admin2 is rereading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.

White and white.
Admin1 is reading Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass. Admin2 is reading Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway.
Black and black.

Aphantopus hyperantus sitting on a blackberry leaf. Their dark wings give them more solar energy so they are active on cloudy days.
Admin1 is reading Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway, who gives the hardboiled crime genre — there’s even a character called Marlowe — an SF slant (as have various other writers). Here it’s a tale of squabbling ultra-rich tech-heads who’ve had a life-extension process that also make them very tall. Rather different (and shorter) from books like Gnomon and Angelmaker, it seems to have more in common with NH’s novels under his ‘Aidan Truhen’ monicker, which is an anagram if I’ve ever seen one. Thanks Admin2!
Admin2 is reading April in Spain* by John Banville. An Irish couple on holiday spot somebody they presumed to be dead. A slow burner with a shock ending.

Celastrina argiolus on a pretty plant next door.
Admin1 is rereading The Birdwatcher by William Shaw. Admin2 is rereading Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw. Rhymes!

Cabbage Whites en route to our cabbages.
And here are their lovely golden eggs.
Admin2 is reading The Blood Divide by AA Dhand, a bizarre story in which a low-life Bradford cornershop proprietor is guided to his destiny in India via copious amounts of violence and bloodshed.

First peacock butterfly of spring, photographed at a distance in some other person’s garden.
Admin1 is reading What You Pay For by Claire Askew and Admin2 is reading 84K by another Claire, Claire North, which has been languishing on our shelves, unintentionally unopened, for the last five years and now, with its corporate-capture government dystopia, seems even more prescient.

First one we’ve seen all year. Photo is a bit subdued because it was taken though the window at an angle.
Admin1 is reading This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas. Admin2 is reading First Light by Peter Ackroyd: astronomers, archaeologists, Aldebaran and agriculturalists.

Pieris rapae feeding on our lavender.
Admin1 is reading Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas. Admin2 has been reading The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, which is like a fiendish logic problem, not helped by its old-fashioned style and Admin2’s ignorance of aristocratic Japanese culture in the 1930s.

Hello, pretty patterned fly-by-day moth. We look forward to golden eggs and stripy caterpillars on the ragweed. Oh, and hello Fiona too. Long time since we’ve had a house guest.
Last month was the third sunniest June on our records: 252.4kWh.
Admin1 is reading The Royal Secret by Andrew Taylor. Admin2 is reading Smoke Screen by Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger.