Topic: Exotic butterfly in our garden!!

[angle shades]

today we have had a very large black butterfly, with white patches on its wings, long black legs and blue eye sockets, and tongue, in our greenhouse on my fig plants , it most definitely isn't a British butterfly and has to have escaped from a butterfly house, It came back into the garden three times, staying for a long period on the buddleia bush.

I will try and post a piccy tomorrow, good job the weather is going to be tropical for the next few days, it may come back tomorrow :-\/ shades x

[Georgie]

Oooh, how exciting.  The only black butterfly I can think of is the confusingly named white admiral but I'm sure you have ruled that out.  Look forward to the pics.  :)

G x

[hippydave]

if the white was round the edge of the wings it could have been a ringlet or if the white was quite thick it could have been a Camberwell Beauty but they are quite a rare migrant visitor.

[lavenderlux]

I found a Camberwell Beauty butterfly on my allotment in August three years ago - and it really was a beauty;  I had to look it up to find out what it was and then reported it to the butterfly recorder for my County (Suffolk).  It seems they come over from Scandinavia some years and thus, Angle Shades, with you being on the East Coast of the UK this may be what you have.  If you google 'camberwell beauty butterfly' there's lots of pictures and if this is what you have, you may wish to report it to your County Butterfly Recorder (you can contact them through your local County Wildlife Trust)

[Robert_Brenchley]

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species.php?vernacular_name=Camberwell+Beauty

[angle shades]

 :) thanks for your replies,but it was a tropical hot house butterfly, the nearest butterfly hot houses to me are in Wragby and Sleaford.

It came back into the garden the next day and looked awful, very tatty, my neighbours passed its dead body to me the next day and I still have it.

Georgie... yes it was very exciting and we tried to feed it with sugar solution , the local bird population were quite scared of it, will post a picture when I can / shades x