butterfly

I just noticed your butterfly photo sweetpea, it's a speckled wood butterfly. We get a lot of them round here, they're very territorial & you quite often see two of them whizzing around in the air together if one strays into another's sunbathing spot!

If it's a male & a female they might end up settling their differences that way sweetpea!

I'm lucky enough to have three hedgehogs visiting my garden every evening (I put out hedgehog food for them). Two usually come together, a full grown one and another smaller one, and another full grown one who visits usually on its own, although I have seen all three at the same time. I wondered whether the large and small one could be mother and this year's youngster (it's not very big). SueA I know you're knowledgeable about hedgehogs, what do you think?

Oops! I've put this under the wrong subject, but it won't let me move it

peony 'Butterfly' the hedgehog ( ) is probably teaching her youngster to hunt, they don't stay together very long , the babies become independent when they're a couple of months old & possibly the other adult which comes on it's own is a male as they just mate & then leave the females to bring the babies up by themselves. We've got an adult hedgehog in our new garden, it comes every night, I put out hedgehog food but it seems to prefer the mealworms I put out for the birds so I just put extra out morning & night.

Yes peony, they seem to love them, I put them out & the bird suet nibbles with the hedgehog food on the lawn & they're all gone in the morning, I think the magpies clean up anything they leave though. Last night we had two hedgehogs at the same time but I looked out a few minutes later & there was only one, I think our regular hedgie must have chased off the interloper. I have a large plant pot saucer full of water beside the garage & he drinks from that after he's hoovered the lawn from one end to the other!