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California quail visit the garden for the first time and prove they aren't scared of heights

Red and yellow admirals find the flower garden, joining monarchs, blues and cabbage whites.

Please spare 15 minutes for this NZ butterfly citizen science project! The Big Butterfly Count is back!

What are the best butterfly flowers for mid-summer in Auckland?

The wild weather has been a curse, but the silver lining has been relief for the butterflies & plants

A return visit to Franklin Farm butterfly house in Waimauku, west Auckland, inspires me.

An update on all the wins and losses recently in the garden: Butterflies, wildlife & plants

I am distracted by three new-to-me cicada species in the warm November weather, meaning the gardening didn't get done.

What's worse than a new wasp in the garden? Three more. Anterhynchium tamarinum is definitely established locally.

These are the flowers that the butterflies are really attracted to in the first month of summer.

Monarchs start visiting the butterfly garden and I start raising admirals alongside them

Anterhynchium tamarinum is not known to be established in NZ, but I caught one.

You don't need to leave central Sydney to see beautiful butterflies. Just head for the royal botanic garden.

A couple of successful wasp trap lures plus loads that did not work. Plus a new wasp to contend with.

Blackbirds may have a lovely song, but they are decimating my seedlings.

November 2025 I have written about copper butterflies previously , and how I was planting muehlenbeckia, their host plant, despite the butterfly garden being over half a kilometre from the coast and perhaps not providing the right environment for copper butterflies. They are most likely to be found within sight of a beach (as are most New Zealanders, to be fair) but the inland sightings on iNaturalist gave me a little hope. I have three types of muehlenbeckia now, with two j

Yellow-legged hornets, Vespa velutina, have been found nearby and I try more traps and recipes for wasp capture

I make a barrel pond with New Zealand native pond plants and there are already visitors!

Killing wasps now saves butterflies. Find out the unusual place I found a paper wasp nest.

A carnivorous moth? I find an unassuming, at-risk species of moth in the garden and have my eyes opened.