Sussex summer skies ablaze with butterflies

SIR – I can reassure John Brooks (Letters, August 7), who has seen few butterflies this year, that they are plentiful in West Sussex.

Last weekend I spent an hour in my garden photographing red admiral, peacock, gatekeeper and small tortoiseshell butterflies.

Only one, the peacock, was on buddleia. The favourite flowers among butterflies – here at least – seem to be lavender, single varieties of dahlia and flowering hebe shrubs. Linda Bos Midhurst, West Sussex

SIR – The butterflies appear to have all come to Hertfordshire.

I have just counted 10 red admirals on one flowering buddleia and eight on another. There are a lot of whites fluttering around too. Joanna Staughton Sarratt, Hertfordshire

SIR – Mr Brooks should visit Newby Hall in North Yorkshire.

On a recent visit there to wander round its beautiful gardens – in particular the herbaceous border – we saw a splendid spectacle of lepidoptera. Linda Roughley West Ella, East Yorkshire

SIR – If Mr Brooks wishes to come and sit in my vegetable patch, he can watch thousands of the little blighters from dawn to dusk to his heart’s content.

He is welcome to take as many back with him as he wishes. Terry Frost Wenlock, Shropshire

SIR – It’s not just butterflies which are missing, is it?

When did you last return from an evening drive to find your windscreen plastered with dead insects? Or shut your windows in the dark to stop moths bouncing off the lights or midges drowning in your wine?

The insect world is shrinking – or am I just imagining it? Monika Butler Embsay, North Yorkshire