Green-veined White pupa in my moth trap cover... The silliest pupa location I ever found was a Large White pupa inside the attic light switch!

The soldierfly Sargus bipunctatus is fairly frequent in my garden now that the beef farm has gone almost organic (it breeds in cow pats)...

Trousers on the head! A Small Tortoiseshell in our garden today, briefly: the first seen here this year and my 6th nationally. As the song goes, 'You don't know what you've got till it's gone...

I wondered who'd eaten most of the Bog Bean leaves in my garden pond, then spotted this full-grown Elephant Hawkmoth 'pillar basking on an inverted lily pad...

Thug of the Day. Stroppy male Speckled Wood outside my front door, attacks anything that moves, even my cat. Wants to get reincarnated as a Purple Emperor: has got what it takes. #ViolentThuggery

Yay! Male Southern Hawker emerging from my (small) garden pond today. The emergent vegetation around the pond is encrusted with dragonfly exuviae. The pond is managed for dragonflies, soldierflies, hoverflies & newts (3 spp), not frogs.

Big female Great Green Bush-cricket on Rodborough Common, Stroud, today. Yay!

Many Chalkhill Blue colonies have crashed this year, in part because of coarse grasses swamping the foodplant in this mega veg growth summer. My local colony has held up well, I think because Yellow Rattle checked grass growth and helped the cows out...

Slow start to the day, after a heavy dew: the Red Ads are still upside-downing...

Lovely hoverfly Xanthogramma pedissequum basking in my garden this morning. Supposed to breed on aphids in ant nests (8 years of Latin + Greek doesn't help translate that name - something to do with feet...)

We'll be launching the pre-pub offer on our #FliesofBritainandIreland at AES Annual Exhibition, Kempton Park Racecourse on 28 Sept. Come & see us & get a glimpse of some of the pages from the book on Naturebureau/Pisces Publicatiions stall Steven Falk Gail Ashton 💚🪲🌍 Rory Dimond 🌼🪰🌼🐝🌼🦟

First butterfly of the new month, a Speckled Wood, blackberrying, already...

Finger's crossed for the 2nd brood of the Adonis Blue in the Cotswolds (+ elsewhere). Numbers seem very low, due to the poor summer & massively strong grass growth / 'under'-grazing, but it should be at peak this week, and the weather forecast is fair...

This was an old fashioned (70s', 80s', 00s') summer: metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news-… So why was Insect Depletion so pronounced??? Possibilities include adverse weather events at key times, the mild wet winter, Neonics+ ??? Am worried about mild wet winters...

Red Admiral pupal tent on nettle today, plus the pupa. Can remember finding my first, this time 60 years ago... A Hard Day's Night was No 1. Great to feel ten years old again!

Had lunch in a calf creche today (Aberdeen Angus suckler herd). We discussed Matters of Import, like Weather, Rumen function, the Benefits of Brexit etc, and chewed the cud together...

Double Entomology! Kite-tailed Robberfly basking on a Marsh Fritillary larval web today (1/3rd of MF webs checked today had gone into hibernation, 1/3rd were thinking about it. No sign of any Cotesia parasites).

Yesterday I saw my first specimen of the year of the supposedly & once common migrant hoverfly Scaeva pyrastri, hill-topping on the downs (It may be less scarce in urban habitats). Larvae predate aphids. Our annual hoverfly influx largely failed this year.

Vile here today, making this my first butterfly-less day since - wait for it - Aug 8th (= 26 days). In old-fashioned bad summers it was hard to get butterfly-day runs of longer than ten days. This late summer period has been quite good down South.

Now is a great time to visit the New Forest as the damp weather is perfect for #mosses - discover their beauty in Clive Chatters' new book #TheNatureoftheNewForest We're expecting delivery end of Sept – pre-order by 31st October & SAVE £££s bit.ly/3xfmHcM BBSBryology