Painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) on Mahonia this week
I felt a bit depressed as I sat at my desk on Friday morning, overwhelmed by working full-time from home, an unwell husband and all the housework. But blue skies and a couple of “exciting” nature observations brightened my mood no end…
We pruned our huge Mahonia brutally last year but it has come back better than ever, its yellow flowers attracting so much wildlife with their pollen – and later the berries. It was the subject of one of my very early blog posts in November 2009 – see here.
I picked up my camera and zoomed in on a butterfly I didn’t quite recognise and it turned out to be a painted lady (Vanessa cardui) – we see many speckled wood (Pararge aegeria) and holly blue (Celastrina argiolus) butterflies in our garden but I don’t think I have ever seen a painted lady before.
The Mahonia was also full of buzzing bees (top right and bottom left of picture)
A little later I looked out of the landing window and saw what I thought was a wood pigeon preening itself on an ash tree beyond the neighbour’s roof. But it didn’t look quite right so I grabbed my camera again and zoomed in to find it was a male sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)!
Annoyingly I could not find an angle that got rid of that twig obscuring the sparrowhawk’s face…
…although i did manage to catch its eye
The Squirrelbasket 
Amazing how nature does that, it cheers us up whenever we are down.
Keep watching and posting photos please. 👍
Thank you for your very kind comments.
Take care 🙂
So nice to have wild nature close by … and that you do appreciate it 🙂 I especially the eye of the sparrow hawk.
Thanks – although having a window on wildlife right in front of me as I work at my desk makes me lazy – I should be going out more!
All the best 🙂
Shame I couldn’t see the rest of it!
All the best 🙂
That sparrowhawk would have cheered up my day too. Hope your husband is doing better, now I am slowly catching up with blogs.