What is buzzing or flying near you today??

Wow! That is a seriously impressive butterfly. I don't know what it is but if you Google "butterflies portugal" you might find a website that will help

 

Yes, the first one appears to be Papilio machaon and the second an Iphiclides feisthamelii, but it doesn't give the English names.

Think I've found a new hobby!

 

LoL, try saying that last one after a couple of glasses. :D

 

I can't even pronounce it before the couple of glasses! :D

Having been browsing on-line for a book of Portuguese butterflies (borboletas) and it appears only one has been written and that is available from Denmark! Makes sense!

Now that I have TWO borboletas I shall have to make a little folder for them!

 

On further investigation, the first one is a Papilio machaon, the Swallowtail. The second one is Iphiclides podalirius, the Scarce Swallowtail. However, in Southern France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa it is called the Iphiclides feisthamelii, the Southern Scare Swallowtail.

 

OK not a very good pic (taken from the lounge window) but this female Redstart stopped off in our garden, as the Wheatears did previously, for a rest before flying off to Africa.They stop here for a day or so every year, just lucky if we are around to see them.

 

Lovely photos.. The first one on the glass is the Lacewing and should be honoured and protected by every gardener. Beautiful creature and it eats lots and lots of aphids. It is very ugly as a larva and is often squashedd BUT the larvae eat even more greenflies than the adult!

Copulating bees looks painful! Superb and so very well captured - Well done indeed. :D

 

Congratulations GW on another outstanding batch of photographs..
OUTSTANDING.

 

thanks for both your kind comments & also for the identification H

 

GREENWIZARD: That Lacewing photo is superb

 

You have excelled yourself GW, fantastic photos, I think i'll bin my camera!

 

Brent geese have just arrived on the Essex marshes. They have flown in from Siberia and Spitzbergen and will spend the winter with us. These are really wild geese and nothing like the tame Canada Geese that you see in parks. I love 'em.



Wigeon are ducks that have also just arrived from Scandinavia and Siberia. You can recognise them by the orange patch on the faces of the drakes.



Mersea Island is wonderful and just one of many wild places on the much maligned Essex coast. I am seriously addicted to it.