A “Summer of wildlife” – Butterflies

D loves butterflies, she likes to watch them, draw them and imagine herself as a butterfly. It’s an escape for her, away from her anxieties and she’ll say that she wishes she had wings so that she could fly up into the clouds, away from her blank screen anxieties (amongst others).

We cultivated some butterflies from caterpillars last year, it was fascinating to document their progress daily and I blogged about it (with pictures) here http://www.autismmumma.com/2012/07/03/from-caterpillars-to-beautiful-butterflies-a-journey-in-pictures/

The back garden has been full of butterflies and bees this year, I was able to get some really close-up shots as they flew in and out for some nectar.

The BBC showed a "Springwatch Guide to Butterflies and Moths" yesterday and I thought it was something that D would enjoy so we watched it this morning.

Iplayer link here http://195.188.87.10/mobile/iplayer/episode/b037k5vp

It was fascinating! She doesn’t normally tolerate real-life programmes, preferring instead cartoons where the ending is more predictable, but she loved the brilliant shots of caterpillars and she remembered when we had caterpillars and their transformation.

We learnt quite a bit from it too, we’ve been visited by so many Peacock butterflies this year and they lay their eggs in stinging nettles. There are a lot of those in the woods near us so they’ve obviously grown up nearby and popped across for a bit of a visit.

The programme is an hour long and was very interesting, there are some scenes of butterflies having been pinned to display boards, which thankfully is no longer popular now but the sight of them did upset D.

Plenty of tips contained in there to attract more butterflies and moths to the garden and more information can be found on the official website here:

This is D as a butterfly 🙂