It's July and it was sunny and windy so birds were quiet, Ebird list HERE and the butterflies were mainly keeping to the sheltered areas too.
I was hoping to have dinner there and buy some produce but the shop shut at 5pm. Must remember in future that the shop is open 9-5, the cafe is open from 9-11 for breakfast and then lunch at 11-4 (last orders 3pm) and the restuarant 12-4 (Wednesdays to Sundays only). Will stop off again as it's literally a 5 minute diversion from my normal route. More interested in trying the beef than seeing most of the wildlife (pretty standard stuff anywhere else in Europe but wonderful to see in the UK).
More about Knepp HERE
Purple Emperor (above and below)- looks like a female with no purple sheen despite various angles and also looks like the white markings are extensive too. Females are generally very elusive so if it is a female it was quite lucky to get a decent photo. This was only one of two I saw, the other presumably a male, glided across a ride in the high canopy. It was a record year for Emperors at Kneep this year with 283 recorded on a single day, national media story about that HERE. Purple Emperors are most active from around 11am to the early afternoon so I was pretty lucky seeing any on a late afternoon/early evening walk.
Purple Hairstreak- plenty of these
Painted Lady
Gatekeeper was the most numerous butterfly species - also had a presumed Silver-washed Fritillary dashing past and good numbers of common butterflies- Comma, Red Admiral, Speckled Wood, Small and Large Whites, my first Ringlets of the year, Meadow Brown.
White Storks of course (above and below)
Fallow Deer
White Storks over Knepp
Wilded habitat over Knepp. Great to see but rather alarming that semi-natural habitat should be such a novelty in the UK, this extensively managed scrub habitat is widespread in places like Bulgaria. It would be interesting to see a Bulgarian's reaction to paying £110 (220 lev) to go on a safari through this kind of habitat to see Turtle Doves and Nightingales (roadside and garden birds there) or to pay £175 (350 lev- half a week's wages) for a pasture to plate meal- basically garden pork and veg is pretty standard for rural living Bulgarians. Interesting that basic habitat and standard of living for everyone a century or two ago is now high end luxury- nearly two centuries of Capitalism has in many ways made everyone poorer. Let's hope that with western national debt deficits at nearly 100 percent to GDP, the populists like Trump gutting out democracy, driving inequality, creating an extremely volatile financial system (the Big Beautiful Bill should tip the scales by creating too much of a a wealth inbalance in the US with rich getting richer and the poor poorer, tensions there will surely boil over?) and the whole world being able to see clearly now that Zionist lobbied western systems are relying on mass child killing in Gaza to sustain themselves all set to the background of escalating climate chaos and ecological meltdown... let's hope that the end to this system cycle is near. With the AI singularity predicted to be reached by 2030 which also coincides with global 2030 agenda targets ( from e.g. the World Economic Forum), there's some hope that we are edging closer to escalating system collapse and regeneration. Can only hope that the AIs build in Knepp style farming systems across Europe and the UK in a more effective way than the increasingly watered down EU-exit agricultural reform bills, less influenced from the lobbying powers of the NFU and corrupted human political algorithms.
The market garden at Knepp- absolutely buzzing with insects
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