Good season for Camberwell Beauties

It´s a good season for Camberwell Beauties. My garden "butterfly restaurant" has been attracting up to 4 of them together and with at least 25 Red Admirals and some Commas. I don´t think I´ve ever had as many butterflies on my apple-compost in late summer/ autumn. They are in pristine condition this time of the year and you can easily see the red velvety tone on the upper side. That colour is not very visible after hibernation, when they tend to look more dark, blackish brown.

Purple Emperor in my garden!

When I started to look at butterflies (2006), Purple Emperor was a hard to see species, confined to the very south of Sweden exclusively. I remember going there with my family and a bag of rotting bananas soaked in wine (accidentally) to lure it down from the canopies. We succeeded and the butterfly came flying past our faces very close, but I never managed to take any pictures. Since then I´ve seen it many times abroad, but always with the feeling it is a great butterfly to see and photograph. During the last ten years it has made a remarkable expansion of it´s range in Sweden and is now found up to the north of the county Upland, some 650 km north of it´s former core area. In Västmanland it was first sighted 3 years ago, and with a couple more records every year since then, it has been on every butterfly-watchers want-to-see-list locally. I baited my garden for weeks and now suddenly there it sat! On some fermenting pieces of melon. He´s imperial high-ness…the Purple Emperor! In my own garden!