And a few more butterflies...........

There were so many lovely butterflies at the National Butterfly Centre (sorry - just can't spell it the American way....) in McAllen. The centre itself has beautiful walks along shaded paths, butterfly lures along the trails and a wonderful bird feeding area.

We were instructed to shout out if we saw anything rare or exciting - trouble is we didn't know what we were looking at and apparently the Band-Celled Sister was a bit of a catch!

Bordered Patch

 

Band-Celled Sister

 

Gray Hairstreak - Wings open

 

 Texan Crescent

 

 

Common or White Checkered Skipper

(almost inseparable and possibly the same species)

Butterflies of Texas

We have just returned from Texas - we went mainly to see the birds (and the sunshine and our friends and not necessarily in that order....) but we were introduced to the beautiful Texan butterflies by Lorna. These are a few of the ones we saw. Apologies if any of the names are wrong - we are novices - corrections gratefully accepted! We'll post some more photos when we've identified them....

 

American Lady

Gray Hairstreak

 

 

 Reakirt's Blue

 

 

Gulf Fritillary

 

 

Pipevine Swallowtail

Garden birdlife

Our garden is a little bit of an oasis amongst the concrete of our neighbours' patches. We like to put out feeders and have been rewarded by some beautiful birds visiting. Today has been blustery with snow showers so the feeders have been particularly busy. We get large numbers of sparrows and starlings but also blue tits, goldfinches, blackbirds, robins, dunnock, collar doves and wood pigeons. Today we have also been visited by two pairs of chaffinches, a siskin (a first!) and a flock of long-tailed tits. We also got our first (known) visit from a Great Spotted Woodpecker! He obviously likes the suet pellets. Luckily he stayed still long enough to get some photos, the other littler fellas were not so accommodating. The fox that appeared at the bottom of the garden was also too fleet footed............

 

 

Female Blackbird

 

 

                            

                  Goldfinches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robin

 

 

 

 House sparrow and Siskin

 

 

 

Woodpigeon

 

 

 

 

Great Spotted Woodpecker - what a beauty!!

Epsom Downs

Epsom Downs are an area of chalk upland and are part of the North Downs in the south of England. They have been our home for the last 6 years and have a wealth of wildlife, enjoyable walks and excellent pubs! 

The Downs have their own micro-climate. You can wake to inches of snow, blankets of fog or torrential rain then travel 4 miles and find a sunny, dry world where people regard you with amusement when you tell them about the weather you left behind. We call this the Mount Epsom effect as we clearly live at much greater altitudes than our Surrey neighbours!

It is our hope that this blog will show you some of the wildlife on the Downs and also other areas of the world from our travels. We have learnt from older and wiser bloggers (you know who you are.....) that an eclectic mix makes for an interesting blog! If others don't find it interesting we'll just have to enjoy it ourselves : )

As it's still just about Winter, here are some scenes of the Downs in the frosty mornings...........

The Downs are famous for Epsom Racecourse, home of the Epsom Derby. The horses are exercised daily first thing in the morning......