A female holly
blue Celastrina argiolus, like a flake of blue sky that has fallen to
Earth, has been laying eggs on holly flower buds in the garden.
When we first came
to live in Co. Durham in 1975 several butterflies that I had been familiar with
in the south of the country were nowhere to be seen. There were no holly blues,
commas had been extinct here for a century and speckled woods, small skippers
and ringlets were very uncommon. Since then, as the climate has changed and
winters have become milder, they have all become common. Speckled woods
regularly breed in my garden now, here in the foothills of the North Pennines.
I didn’t seen a holly blue here in the North East until 2014, when I found
one under
the Byker viaducts in Newcastle, of all places. Then in 2017 I saw another
in Sunderland.
In 2019 they turned up in my garden in Durham in spring and it was clear that
they must have laid eggs on the holly hedge because the summer generation
emerged and then laid eggs on ivy flower buds The adult butterflies seem
attracted to forget=me-not and alkanet flowers in spring and the summer
generation nectar on borage, devil’s bit scabious, marjoram and thyme flowers.
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