Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Emperor on Buddleia


Just found your blog. Yesterday I had the thrill of seeing a Purple Emperor here in Kent (Otford, on the North Downs) - feeding on buddleia. I know they're not supposed to do that, but it was (and I filmed it). :)

I've attached a couple of the pictures I took with my phone. It fed for about 5 minutes, then flew off.

I'd seen it about 20 minutes earlier flying around a bramble/old man's beard hedge and knew it was something I hadn't seen before, but couldn't see it clearly then.

There is a goat willow in the garden, and I think there are a lot of goat willows in a wooded area nearby.


From Di Napier

3 comments:

dennis said...

Hello Di,
very interesting.
one of our members [upper thames branch] had a similar experience in his chinnor garden last year, when a female visited his buddleia two days running, staying several hours.
I posted his photos on the purple empire too

dennis said...

Hello Di,
very interesting.
one of our members [upper thames branch] had a similar experience in his chinnor garden last year, when a female visited his buddleia two days running, staying several hours.
I posted his photos on the purple empire too

irisscientist said...

Hi Di Napier. I am glad the post finally came through. I tried to access your photos yesterday, but was only granted entry to the Facebook page this morning. I was certain folks here would be interested in seeing this. Just glad to see the post made it.