{"id":2996,"date":"2016-08-29T20:08:31","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T19:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2996"},"modified":"2016-08-29T20:39:56","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T19:39:56","slug":"counting-the-small-tortoiseshells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2996","title":{"rendered":"Counting the Small Tortoiseshells"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

It all sort of made sense when I heard on the radio this morning that there is a drastic decline this year of the number of small tortoiseshell butterflies.\u00a0 Yesterday I was out in the garden lurking beside the buddleia bush trying for a few butterfly pictures in\u00a0 the morning sunshine.\u00a0 I had been preparing a slide show for the Peterhead New Senior Ladies Fellowship based on the nature pictures I have been posting on Facebook for the past few months, and I felt I would like a couple of butterfly pictures for the section on the theme “All creatures great and small.”<\/p>\n

\"Small<\/a>
Small Tortoiseshell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year there were lots of the tortoiseshells about, although I recalled that I had always though that they were Red Admirals, at least that what I used to call them when I was a boy.\u00a0 Looking them up I discovered that these butterflies where tortoiseshells. There were a few of the Red Admirals about, but no so many.<\/p>\n

Yesterday there was a whole navy\u00a0 of Red Admirals feeding on the buddleia, but just one or two Tortoiseshells. The decline has obviously affected Hatton too.<\/p>\n

I must prune the buddleia which has got a big straggly so that I can do my big to help the butterflies next year.<\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a>
Red Admiral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Red<\/a>
Red Admiral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Red<\/a>
Red Admiral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It all sort of made sense when I heard on the radio this morning that there is a drastic decline this year of the number of small tortoiseshell butterflies.\u00a0 Yesterday I was out in the garden lurking beside the buddleia bush trying for a few butterfly pictures in\u00a0 the morning sunshine.\u00a0 I had been preparing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2996"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3008,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2996\/revisions\/3008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}