Butterflies of Cornwall {book review}

On July 21, 2023May 3, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation2 Comments

Hello friends!

Have ya had a good week? Since its week two of the Big Butterfly Count I thought I’d try something a little different from usual and write a book review!!

Incase it hasn’t already been established I’m a little bit crazy for butterflies and since I’m trying to entice as many of them into my newly designed/planted Wildspace, I thought that I’d try to find a book to give me an idea of which butterflies are most likely to visit the area (and grow the plants accordingly).

Butterflies of Cornwall, atlas for the twenty-first century was published by Cornwall Butterfly Conservation in 2021.

If you’ve not heard of them Butterfly Conservation is kinda like WWF or the RSPB, you join for about £3.00 per month and are sent an amazing welcome pack including postcards, and a lovely little book on gardening for moths and butterflies as well as a handy caterpillar guide and then you receive the Butterfly magazine three times a year (I get ever so excited when I know its on its way!) It’s a really lovely group to be involved with. They organise field trips and everything which is awesome.

Plus I love a book!

So here’s my review…

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Raising Painted lady Butterflies

On July 14, 2023May 3, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography6 Comments

Creepy crawly caterpillars, creep crawl creep. Creepy crawly caterpillars hear them creep. Crawly crawly creep. Creepy creepy crawl. I’ve got caterpillars to share with you all!!

Hello friends!

Firstly, d’ya like my song?

Secondly, ever bought a plant at a garden centre and ended up bringing aphids/bugs home?

Seeing as today kicks off Butterfly Conservations Butterfly Count I thought I’d share a look at the new peeps I’ve been caring for! (Warning its kinda a long post!)

Well, as intoned in the above verse I’ve had caterpillars!!! I’ve actually set up and built my own butterfly house so that I can raise and release butterflies I find in the garden. Although I didn’t actually find these chaps in the garden (I found them in the kitchen), I decided I wanted to add a couple more thistles to my growing collection of plants because I love them, especially the pink ones! (there’s something punky about them) and while I was trying to find a moment to plant them I realised something was eating them…well it turned out to be caterpillars – Painted ladies to be precise! One of my favourites!!

Setting up and creating my own butterfly house to give them their best chance in life has been awesome – we have a lot of bird life here and apparently a blue tit chick can eat 100 caterpillars each day, butterflies are already quickly declining – if by doing my bit for conservation and getting nine out of ten pupae to emerge can help bolster the species numbers then I’ll do it. Plus, everyone needs a hobby and watching them complete their life cycle brings me such an extreme amount of joy I can’t really put it into words.

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Insects and minibeasts in the wild! {Insect week 2023}

On June 23, 2023June 28, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography7 Comments

Hey friends! How are ya?

This week is insect week – which is run by the Royal entomology society to try and get us to engage with the importance of insects/pollinators.

Something I love about photographing bugs or animals is that you have until they lose interest or fly away to try and capture an amazing image so this week I thought I’d share seven of the best (in my opinion) bug photos I’ve taken over the last month or two.

This year I accidentally bought a dyer’s camomile instead of the regular type you make tea with and the flowers are massive, this iridescent green swollen-thighed beetle (Oedemera nobilis) rested on it for a few minutes and then flew away.

Isn’t it a magnificent colour?

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Raising Small tortoiseshell Butterflies

On June 9, 2023July 10, 2023 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography5 Comments

Happy second Friday in June my friends,

Here’s a little butterfly centred post fluttering its way to you. You might remember that a couple of months ago I posted about rescuing some orange tip butterfly pupae?

Well recently I’ve been caring for 9 Small tortoiseshell caterpillars, which pupated about ten days ago! It was so exciting. I’ve raised these butterflies before, my newly improved butterfly house involves serval pop-up mesh enclosures and many different types of butterfly friendly plants to simulate the outside world – in an attempt to give them a better start in life.

Butterflies in the UK are declining so quickly that I want to be able to save as many of them as I can to help boost the local populations.

I love it when they ‘colour up’ and you can see the suggestion of wing patterns through the shell.

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Raising Orange Tip Butterflies

On April 14, 2023July 10, 2023 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends!

Nature is magical isn’t it?!

This weeks post is a butterfly centred photography collection.

I recently had to have a bit of a clear out in my new garden, for many reasons but mainly that (1) it was full of some seriously dead plants and (B) there was a little section of fencing that connected to the dry stone wall (I mean its literally one of my life goals to have a garden with a dry stone wall) that meant my dog could get out. I felt so bad for having to take away some of the dead plants but needed to make it safe for my pooch.

While I was having this clear out I found four Orange tip butterfly pupae! Being a towny I’ve never really seen these before and the pupae themselves were tiny, but being the bug freak that I am I brought them inside and created an environment for them to finish their transformation and wanted to share the photos with you.

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Embroidered Butterfly #1 {Small tortoiseshell} (updated May 2024)

On March 31, 2023May 17, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs10 Comments

Hello friends!

**This post was edited on 17/5/24 as I’ve remade the butterfly and updated the pictures**

I’ve got a new butterfly embroidery to share this week. I’m really happy with the Small tortoiseshell photograph (that I posted last week!) I particularly love this type of butterfly, they always seem so happy – don’t get me wrong all butterflies seem happy, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t like/was scared of them (not that there’s anything wrong in that of course).

So now I’ve created a few practice versions of these I have decided to give myself a bit of a challenge…I’m gonna have a go at creating all 61 types of British butterflies…in scale with each other!

That’s right in scale!!

Yep I’ve gone and got cabin fever cos its been raining too long! I mean honestly it’s been persisting pretty much everyday since the middle of February.

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Small tortoiseshell Butterfly {One frame}

On March 24, 2023July 7, 2023 By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends!

I hope life has been treating you well.

Its been 4 or 5 weeks since my last One Frame and I’ve got a new one to share with you!

Recently I found a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly sunbathing on some really over grown stinging nettles and got a few really good photos of the wee beastie without disturbing it!! Doesn’t it just have the most fluffiest body ever!? And I love how much detail I managed to capture – its eyes are amazing.

The Small tortoiseshell is one of the most well-known butterflies we have in Britain, they are quite possibly my favourite and like a fairly wide range of nectar heavy flowers – this year I’m gonna start creating my own butterfly garden for all pollinators to try and do a little bit extra for nature. Hopefully I’ll find lots of other butterflies to photograph.

The natural light was so good that this image taken with my Nikon in macro mode, and only brightened a little in post prod.

Well that’s pretty much it, one photo of one butterfly, I hope you like it. Do you have a favourite bug? They are wonderful little creatures that run our world and make no fuss whatsoever. I’m thinking about creating an embroidered Small tortoiseshell similar to my others (hopefully you’ll come back to see it next week!)

As always thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!

Photography Recap 2022

On December 30, 2022March 17, 2023 By ArtyMissKIn Photography

Hello my friends,

I hope you had a good Christmas!

This week as it’s the last Friday of the year I thought that I’d create a little recap post with some of my favourite photographs taken in 2022.

So enjoy some black and white photography including ladybirds, butterflies and bumble bees.

In June I actually got some decent shots of a Holly Blue butterfly – I’d never seen one of these before – it had such stripy antennae!

Letting the garden re-wild in the summer for #nomowmay was fun and it didn’t take long for insects to move in, there were so many ladybird beetles, I especially loved photographing them in the early morning.

I even grew my own wildflower ‘mini-meadow’ to encourage bees and really enjoyed watching them in the summer.

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Embroidered Gatekeeper butterfly

On October 21, 2022July 7, 2023 By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs7 Comments

Hello my friends!!

This week I thought I’d post a new embroidery that I’ve been working on.

Looking back at the Gatekeeper butterfly photographs (that I posted last week!) I decided to embroider one similar to my other needlework butterflies – I’m developing quite a collection of needlework bugs/insects.

As always I started by roughly drawing four wing and body shapes onto calico and then filled them in with the closest coloured threads I had. I like to block colour first using two stands of embroidery floss and then blend using a single strand (on the smallest needle imaginable – its like a hair!)

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Gatekeeper Butterfly

On October 14, 2022July 7, 2023 By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends!

Nature is magical isn’t it?!

This weeks post is a new butterfly centred photography collection. Its all about the Pyronia tithonus butterfly or Gatekeeper and over a couple of (very) early mornings it was most courteous and posed for a few pictures. I love insects and I wanted to take you with me into the early morning world of butterflies!

I loved watching the different flowers appear during #nomowmay (I even got up one morning to a huge patch of Ox Eye daisies) that I thought ‘that was fun, let’s let the unwanted plants do their own thing*.’

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