Tag: butterfly

Raising Large White Butterflies (2025 edition)

On By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography3 Comments

Hello my friends,

Happy weekend!!

I’ve got a new butterfly tale for you this week. I’m a great lover of ‘Cabbage butterflies’ they’re pretty much considered a pest and we as humans seem to actively seek and destroy them, which I find really sad so its become fairly well known that I purposely grow cabbages for the butterflies as I view them as a butterfly underdog. 

Anyway, this post began last autumn when the last batch of Large white (Pieris brassicas) caterpillars were happily munching on the last of my cabbages just as the rainy season started. I moved them (cabbage and all) into my butterfly house where they began to pupate over the next few days – these butterflies overwinter in the pupa stage and emerge in spring. So I had 43 of these pupa to guard over the cold moths. (if you want to see a reel of one after its release click HERE *link takes you to my IG*)

Excitingly these butterflies all successfully emerged and were released back at the end of April, Large whites are funny they don’t like to breed indoors but the minute they’re outside they mate left, right and centre, one of the females laid a batch of eggs on my Honesty plants, as my cabbages weren’t very big – unfortunately I didn’t spot the tiny caterpillars until I’d cut the plant down, so feeling guilty I bought them a tray of baby cabbage plants and moved them to safety. 

They ate me out of house and home!

Continue reading “Raising Large White Butterflies (2025 edition)” →

Embroidered Butterfly #15 {Silver Studded Blue}

On By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs2 Comments

Hello my friends! 

How’s the heat where you are?

A couple of weeks ago I posted a One frame of a Silver studded Blue butterfly I recently met a Cubert Common while adventuring in the sunshine.

It was so cool to see an increasingly rare species just living its best life out in the wild – although that being said according to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, thousands of them have been spotted here this summer which is awesome!

These tiny blue butterflies have a real life wingspan of only 3cm how anything that small survives in the wild is beyond me! I created a male and female as this type of butterfly has whats called Sexual dimorphism  which basically means you can tell the boys from the girls.

My needlework Silver studded blues have a wingspan of about 6cm and they’re #15 of my needlework butterfly quest, the male is the lovely blue one (all the ones I’ve seen have been male) and the little brown one is the much more reserved female.

Continue reading “Embroidered Butterfly #15 {Silver Studded Blue}” →

Silver Studded Blue {One frame}

On By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography4 Comments

Hello my friends! 

I did it I finally sat and typed something up for my blog for my self imposed Fri/Sat deadline!!

Recently I’ve been out on a few adventures and exploring nature filled places. I find being out in the wild to be so soothing and being outdoors comes with the added bonus of finding some new things to snap and share with you…

I recently spent a sunny day wandering around a wonderful little National trust place called Cubert Common, which is such a beautiful landscape to visit. I even met some new butterflies, specifically Silver-Studded blues! Including this one, isn’t he lovely?! 

Silver-Studded blue (Plebejus argus) is considered to be another of our butterflies that is becoming increasingly rare so it was awesome to see over twenty of them enjoying the sunshine! Literally I’ve taken so many photos of them!!

This small butterfly which has a wingspan of around 3cm is found mainly in heathland where they fly low over the heather – their main caterpillar food plant.

The males are a vibrant blue like this one, while the females are actually browning and nowhere near as showy, both sexes have distinct metallic spots on the lower underwing – these tiny markings are used to help distinguish them from the equally lovely Common Blue.

I cannot get over how pretty they are, they have such big eyes and cute stripy antennae.

I really hope you like this photo and that my nature filled posts spread a little bit of happiness in your direction.

As always thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!

Ps. If you want to see more of Cubert Common why not check out one of my previous posts about it HERE!

Embroidered Butterfly #14 {Dingy Skipper}

On By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs7 Comments

Greetings friends! 

Once again I missed my Friday/Saturday posting day, and have landed on a Sunday (again!) so I think I should just change my posting day to sometime-between-Friday-and-Sunday! I might just be able to stick with that over the summer…the sunshine is just too distracting and I tend to put off sitting and physically typing up until last minute and then find I dislike the photos I’ve taken for said post (which is what happened this week the original ones were really dark).

Still, I’ve got a new needlework butterfly to share with you! I became quite attached to the teeny tiny Dingy Skipper I met during my recent exploration of Penhale Dunes and I wanted to create one to add to my ever growing collection of handmade butterflies. 

This is #14 on my Embroidered Butterfly challenge – only 62 more to go!!! If I can make at least one a month that means it should only take like another four or so years!

Dingy Skipper (Erynnis tages) is found in Britain and Ireland but becoming kinda rare. Its grey-brown wings are covered with mottled brown markings and two lines of white spots.

Continue reading “Embroidered Butterfly #14 {Dingy Skipper}” →

Raising a surprise Small Tortoiseshell

On By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography9 Comments

Hey friends! I’ve got a new Butterfly Tale for you this week!!

Again I missed my Friday/Saturday posting day, but hey it’s only Sunday!

I’ve had a chance to raise a new surprise butterfly, a surprise Small Tortoiseshell butterfly to be precise. A few weeks ago I was sitting quietly in the garden enjoying an afternoon in the sun when this little guy crawled up my arm.

Honestly I jumped out of my skin!

Funky looking ain’t he?

Anyway this fellow is a Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) and are a medium/large sized butterfly with a wing span of up to 5.5cm, and are one of our most top 5 butterflies who use the common ol’ nettle as its food plant.

Continue reading “Raising a surprise Small Tortoiseshell” →

Exploring Penhale Dunes {Landscapes and butterflies}

On By ArtyMissKIn Photography8 Comments

Hello my Friends!

Guess what?! I did it again…I really need to learn that when scheduling posts I need to actually set them schedule not draft (rookie mistake!!).

This weeks post comes courtesy of all the lovely weather we’ve been having as I recently spent some time exploring Penhale Dunes.

It was beautiful.

Penhale dunes is an amazing set of really tall (90 metres in places) Atlantic facing sand dunes, the area is classed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and spans a whopping 620 hectares.

Continue reading “Exploring Penhale Dunes {Landscapes and butterflies}” →

Floral folklore #2

On By ArtyMissKIn Photography5 Comments

Hello my friends! 

How are you?!

I skipped last week because its been so sunny here its really quite distracting and I love it, the plants have tripled in size and I’ve already had ten different types of butterfly in the garden!

This week I thought I’d post another floral folklore, I’m always surprised by how folklore changes the way we interact with the plants around us so I’ve chosen three plants currently flowering in the wildspace all with purple-ish hues!

These lovely little Cuckoo flowers (Cardamine pratensis) pop up all over the garden in spring and they are so delicate, in English speaking countries they actually have a few other names – Lady’s smock/Mayflower or Milkmaids and are actually a member of the same plant family as cabbages!

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Embroidered Butterfly #13 {Brimstone}

On By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs5 Comments

Hey friends! 

This week I’ve got a new needlework butterfly to share with you, I became quite attached to the little male brimstone that over-wintered in my butterfly house (my fun and fancy shed!) that wanted to create one to add to my ever growing collection of handmade butterflies. 

This is #13 on my Embroidered Butterfly challenge – only 63 more to go!!! If I can make at least one a month that means it should only take like another four or so years!

Continue reading “Embroidered Butterfly #13 {Brimstone}” →

Brimstone {One frame}

On By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography4 Comments

Hey friends! 

I’ve got a little one frame to share with you this week, over winter I’ve had a whole bunch of butterflies overwintering in my butterfly house (my fun and fancy shed!) which has been awesome, spookily they timed their wake up alarms to coincide with good weather and I’ve been able to release them all back into the big wide world post-hibernation (yay!!).

Including this little fella, he’s a male Brimstone butterfly who moved into my shed in December – I’ve literally no idea how he got in, but thats not the point…isn’t he pretty!

Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) have angular wings so that when they sit amongst the foliage they resemble leaves and hide from predators.

Folklore suggests we may have actually got the word ‘butterfly’ from these guys as the males wings are fluorescent butter yellow!

While we get loads of Brimstone’s in the garden I’ve never had the chance to raise them, so finding one in my butterfly house was amazing. I like to think that bug-kind knows my shed is a safe space for them (although hopefully not too many spiders have moved in over winter!)

For next week I think I’m gonna try and create a needlework Brimstone.

As always thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!

Embroidered Butterfly #12 {Monarch}

On By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs7 Comments

Hello my friends! 

This week I’ve got a new needlework butterfly to share with you and I’ve been really looking forward to making this one! The Monarch is a beautiful orange and black butterfly that spends its time between Canada, America and Mexico. 

As a side note I’ve decided to up the official tally of 61 to include an extra 15 or so butterflies considered to be extinct species of and rare migrants to the UK. As I want to include some of the other rare migrants we occasionally get like the Monarch as well as some of the ones considered extinct in the UK like the Bath white and Large copper – these butterflies still exist in Europe just not here. So my new total is 76! These 15 extra butterflies are all found in The Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington, with really lovely illustrations.

This is #12 on my Embroidered Butterfly challenge – only 64 more to go!!!

The Monarch is the largest and possibly the rarest butterfly seen in the UK – in 2023 just three were seen in here. Unfortunately the caterpillars feed on Milkweed plants which aren’t native to the UK, explaining why the butterfly hasn’t bred here, so sadly I’ve never actually seen one of these in the wild.

Continue reading “Embroidered Butterfly #12 {Monarch}” →