 
Holly BlueThursday 17th August 2000, West Yorkshire
  NEXT DOOR'S Sunflowers are doing well. Look out of our back bedroom window and the flowerbuds are only 2 or 3 feet below the level of our windowsill.After a couple of weeks of being preoccupied the bits and pieces involved in getting a book into print I decide it's time for a change, and I enjoy some hacking back in the garden. 
Peacock butterflies feed on the buddleia, while the Brown Hawker dragonfly hunts over the garden path, as I cut back Nipplewort and Stinging Nettles. Nipplewort is a tall weed related to dandelions and sow-thistles but, unlike them, it doesn't have milky sap. A Holly Blue lands on the lawn next to my gardening gloves. It's a female which has a dark border to its blue upper wings. The females of the first generation in spring don't have such a wide border. The males have only a fine black line around the edges of their blue upper wings.Alongside the more colourful butterflies there are Large Whites on the buddleia and Green-veined Whites, which seem to seek out smaller flowers. 
As we take an evening walk along the towpath there's a commotion behind the Hawthorns on the opposite bank of the canal. A herd of 15 or so bullocks stampedes along the at the foot of the slope opposite.Related LinkButterfly Conservation dedicated to saving wild butterflies, moths and their habitats.
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