Raby Castle Revisited Again! – August 2019

Posted in Adventures, flower, Fuji, FujiX-T2, gardensTagged , , , , , , ,

The thing with some places, like Raby Castle, Alnwick Castle, and a few other sites not part of English Heritage or National Trust but run privately, is that you buy a ticket to get in to the place, which isn’t always cheap, but allows you to visit as many times as you like within a year of buying it. Raby Castle is well worth a few visits and though we’d been back in May, we wanted a return trip to do the butterflies in the beautiful gardens there, always a spectacle.

This year was the year of the painted ladies invasion. The butterfly migrates to the UK each summer where its caterpillars feed on thistles. Every ten years or so there is a “painted lady summer” when they arrive en masse and 2019 was it.

But it wasn’t all painted ladies…

Comma
Small white
Red Admiral
Peacock
Meadow Brown

and the ladies

and it wasn’t all butterflies..

Not sure if these are wasps or hoverflies and I didn’t hang about to find out! 🙂
I was amazed at how much pollen a bee can collect and still fly!
Ladybird
Geese

Raby has a wonderful herd of deer, and we were lucky to get close to these guys again

The chaps
there’s always one….

all pictures can be embiggened with a click
full album of pretty pictures HERE

stay tooned folks!

43 thoughts on “Raby Castle Revisited Again! – August 2019”

    1. Thanks Clare, they migrate from North Africa and the Middle East and get to us late summer, they colonise heavily in the south of us, thin out a bit as they come north, and cross to N.I but don’t seem to go to proper Ireland.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  8. I remember when I identified my first painted lady at the age of about 12. Back then it was quite an unusual sight. Now they are pretty common, especially this year. Also back then, I remember buddleia teeming with dozens of small tortoiseshells. This year I think I’ve seen one!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Do you get more butterflies after a good rainy season (whenever that is!)? We did last year – you could go out and see them everywhere. Sadly, as someone mentioned, modern agricultural practices have doomed so much of the small, unseen life around us. Soon we will pay that price – fruit? vegetables? Anyway, this is a wonderfully colorful and cheerful series in the dead of winter – lovely!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  14. Pingback: Music Monday: Who Did it Better? Baby, it’s Cold Outside – Cast your Vote! – The BookWorm Drinketh

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.