Butterflies in Sizergh Castle Gardens

Brimstone

 Brimstone is the butterfly of the day and they favour pink flowers in the herbaceous border.  The morning is hot and at moments brimstones  become translucent in strong sunlight,   wings self-shadowing and body visible through the hind-wing. With leaf-shaped wings of cryptic design brimstones dissolve into green foliage. The quality of light is remarkable and a fine dark line bordering the wings is visible today.  A flickering play of sunlight  makes colour evanescent and in an instant a rich buttery brimstone is leaf-green or blazed white, all detail erased.  

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Today's light is the more magical because there have been so few sunlit days this  summer. Fascinated by camouflage and the play of sunlight and shadow on brimstones,  I take advantage of their settling on these vibrant pink  flowers.  Brimstones settle with closed wings, one moment the female underwing shows soft green and matt, veins visible. Then comes this lovely translucence. I show brimstone in close-up but the original images give more context and then cryptic colouring and design hide the butterflies well.  Visitors stroll beside this herbaceous border of lovely late-summer flowers and no-one pauses to watch the butterflies and the bees, wasps and hoverflies that favour sedum soon to come into flower.  

This hot and sunny late summer day (two bright days together!) is perfect for butterflies.  It's interesting to see the flowers, the niches they favour in this beautifully planted garden which offers nectar to pollinators through the seasons. Some flowers are already faded, some still to flower- like the curtain of  ivy in which we have previously found comma and red admiral - today nothing.  Although the hives are lively with bees. 
A butterfly alights in the mulch of our track, and vanishes. But I see its shadow even when the butterfly has closed its wings and become invisible. When those wings open just a little I see it's a red admiral.  There 's peacock and tortoiseshell and a few whites, not large numbers but  this has been such a poor summer for butterflies I seize the day and delight in it. 

Spindle leaves already show rich autumn colour.  There's  an exotic rowan we look out for each time we come here, Sorbus vilmorinii. Two years ago in early November  the tree was laden with deep pink berries which bullfinch feasted on and the leaves were rosy hued.  Next year, the tree seemed spent and bare of fruit.   Now it looks full of fruit and I hope to return later  in autumn in the hope bullfinch are here too. 

We came upon this dragonfly in a garden given over to hay meadow flowers, below the castle.   
Perfect weather for late-summer dragonfly and damselfly mating,  hot and rather humid with bright sun .  On the fringes of Sizergh lakes they zip about, low over the edge of the water and over grassy banks.  Too quick to photograph, just flashes of movement and hints of colour. White water lilies are in bloom and I love the seethe and bubble of late-summer aquatic plants.  Two mating red darters fly low over water-lily pads, locked together in nuptial flight.  Too and fro they go, now I see them, now I don't.  Never settling but I think they dip down to the water to deposit eggs on fronds of vegetation.   Afterwards, I search my images to see when I have them, when I have a bewitching mix of floating seeds and the first fallen leaves of late summer and strands of aquatic plants. 
Some visitors are attracted by flickering glimpses of dragonflies and look to see them settle which does not happen.  Noone who passed those lovely brimstones seemed to give them a second glance.  It's the life of the garden. Where would we be without pollinators?  

In the double barn close to the cafe there's an exhibition on trees, including ancient trees at Sizergh. It's excellent and I recommend it.