It’s surprising what you can spot as you wander around in the morning.  A few years ago I worked to produce a small bit of wood land with wildflowers close to my house, the land was once used as an old railway line.  I set about clearing all the trash, some trees were kindly donated and the path called ‘The Standish Line’ became usable again.  With a bit of hard work, some wild flower seed I bought and some beautiful young oak trees, not to mention the odd Pine and Ash that were donated, the little wooded area is coming on a treat now.

Anyway as I was having a look to see how it was doing, I spotted my first butterfly of the year a Speckled Wood Butterfly (sorry about the quality of the picture it was just a snap I took on my phone).  Over the years I have seen quite a few Peacock Butterflies but havent seen many others, it seems the Speckled Wood seems to like it in the little wooded area I saw two in the space of a few minutes.

The Speckled Wood is a common butterfly and familiar to many observers, especially in woodland where, as its name suggests, it is most often found. The appearance of this butterfly changes from north to south, forming a “cline”, where individuals in the north are dark brown with white spots, with those in more southerly locations being dark brown with orange spots.
Source – UK Butterflies

Nice to know that amidst a sea of rows over building new houses in Standish at least one small patch of land is left to grow naturally and become the home to many small animals and insects.

If you would like to read the story of my own little Guerilla Gardening project then click here, it’s just a raw blog of what happened so quite a few rants lol and in no way represents my skills as a web designer lol.