Grow Your Own Magazine

Have seen a pale blue butterfly in and around our garden recently. Have looked on various sites and I recon , due to its underside having the blue colour too (although hard to see cos it wont keep still!) its the holly blue. This fits as its young feed on holly and ivy and we have a huge amount of ivy on our "wild" bank/hedgerow. Can anyone help me confirm this and advise what else I should be providing to help this and other butterflies. Thanks.

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We have a lot of holly blues, they are very lovely, and yes I am sure you are right, that they feed on holly or Ivy, maybe they lay their eggs there. which ever, I have only seen them where both plants are about!

http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/holly_...tcm9-60355.jpg - This is a link for a picture of a Holly Blue - it is pretty.

Im sure its the same as I have seen at my Lottie very pretty

We had one in the garden at the weekend. They are gorgeous little things. I'm also seeing quite a few Orange Tip butterflies - they like Jack by the Hedge (or hedge mustard as it's called). So don't be too tidy in the garden!

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www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated September 29th - Bean drying.

We've got the little blue ones, they're beautiful.

I have several "nests" of Peacock caterpillars in my nettle patch. they look like this:BBC - Science & Nature - Wildfacts - Peacock butterfly

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Later in the year we get a similar looking small blue called the Common Blue. Both are little treasures.

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated September 29th - Bean drying.

Holly Blue is the first of the years 'blues', it is common in gardens/lotties etc. Most obvious features are the pale blue upperwings, and if you see underneath they are pale silvery grey (all other blues have more patterned underwings). Now the Common Blues are starting to appear, a brighter blue colour and with spots on underwings - they will be around all summer, although Holly Blue has a second generation in the summer too.

Unless you are very, very lucky indeed you wouldn't get any of the other British Blue!

LCG

We've had quite a few Holly blues in the garden already & a slightly larger brighter blue one which I assume may be the common blue. Not had many other butterflies yet though, just a few whites & speckled woods & one I think was a comma & possibly a small tortoiseshell - too quick to positively identify though. There don't seem to be as many around as usual, last years bad summer seems to have had an effect.

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I live just a few miles away from Finedon Dandy and have also had the small mauve/pale blue butterflies fluttering through the garden during the past week or so. I am no expert on butterfly recognition and at no time did one settle long enough to take a close look. I checked butterfly sites on the net and thought they might be common blues but it now seems likely that they are in fact holly blues looking at other posts on this thread. Nice to see them around in any case.

It does seem to be a good year for blues. If you want holly blues, you need holly AND ivy, like FinedonDandy. It has an unusual lifecycyle - one generation of eggs is laid on ivy, the next on holly leaves. I've only got a couple of small, straggly hollies, but that and lots of ivy seems to do the trick. Mind you, in this part of Warwickshire, there are quite a lot of old field-hedges made of solid holly - very impressive.

I had one of these sat on my potatoes today: http://upperthames-butterflies.org.u...s_ABeechey.jpg
a male Holly Blue

the Common Blue doesn't have those wing patches: http://www.butterfly-guide.co.uk/spe.../icarusmup.jpg

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