BACKYARD BUTTERFLIES

The warmer weather has brought a bit more life into the Firs Chase garden in West Mersea and it's been great watching a nice variety of butterflies either nectaring or passing through.
Two or three orange-tip butterflies have mainly been passing through but this one above rested on a geranium.

The red admiral was enjoying the colourful spikes of the lilac bush.

The green hairstreak is the most notable resident butterfly in the garden, now showing for its fourth year and surprisingly they all seem to like resting close to the back wall of the house. Here it's nice and sunny and out of the breeze.
Other butterflies noted during the day in the garden were holly blue, speckled wood, large white and small white.

The pied blackbird appeared on the garage roof to survey the garden lawn below. It's spending most of its time in a neighbour's garden.

Other birds noted in the last couple of days were a chiffchaff bathing in the bird-bath, blackcap singing near the front door, cuckoo calling from the neighbours tree, a family of recently-fledged long-tailed tits foraging quickly through the trees, 3 whimbrel flying over calling on Sunday.

Had a feeling it might be worth having a peek under our covered compost heap and wasn't too surprised to find this slow-worm hiding in the warmth.

The moth trap has been run a couple of nights recently and this big lime hawk-moth was resting inside the trap late on Monday night.
Other than a few shuttle-shaped darts, the only other moths were a grey dagger, white-point, brimstone, oak-tree pug and also a couple of big cockchafers.
A couple of evenings earlier a pipistrelle bat was hawking back and forwards low over the garden.

The pebble prominent is a nicely marked moth with the big circular pebble-type pattern on the wings. This one turned up on Friday night.

A tatty lunar marbled brown moth was also caught that same night. A widespread moth, its caterpillars feed on oak.