GARDEN 28 – A WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE

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I’ve been lucky enough to have had many wonderful experiences with the inhabitants of the natural world, and another exploded upon me this afternoon – in my back garden!  Having eaten a little too much lunch, I shouldered the D700 and wandered down into the unkempt jungle that, until I do something about it, is, well, the back garden.

Although I’ve cut a lot of vegetation back, the Hazel and the Lower Oak throw up such a screen that the bottom of the garden isn’t very visible until you get right on down there.  So, I brushed through the tree’s screen and, there in front of me, the Buddleia that I’d also hacked had brought forth many blossoms and, feeding on these, were more Peacock butterflies than I can remember seeing together in one place- there were at least 10 of them in a small space, and the combination of the blooms and the butterflies in the bright sunlight was simply wonderful.

I’d like to have used the 105mm macro but the butterflies were just a bit too far away, so I got up close and personal again with my lover – the 70-300 – and we went at it together.  Put simply, I love butterflies, they have a magic for me, and I’m a sucker most of all for the big ones – these Peacocks, and the Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, the two Whites, the Commas and the Tortoiseshells that are still relatively common in the garden – tho nothing like so common as they were in my childhood, in the 1950s.

I own a simply beautiful book – The Butterflies of Britain & Ireland, by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Lewington (ISBN 0-86318-591-6) – that contains wonderfully beautiful, life-sized paintings together with a wealth of fascinating detail.  This is a favourite book.  If I had to choose just five of my many books to keep, this would certainly be in the five.  If you love natural things, I recommend it unreservedly – my edition is 1991 – I don’t know if its still in print.

And this tells me that the main emergence of new Peacocks occurs in late July – and here we are!

So, some pictures.  Not portraits, but here are the wonderful creatures.  And the last one shows a male Gatekeeper, which was pasturing along the hedge below the towering Ash that I posted a pic of recently.  All Nikon D700 with the 70-300, mainly at 300mm; 400 or 800 ISO.

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