RESEARCH shows that the large white is the most commonly reported butterfly in Britain's gardens -but not in the North.

The charity Butterfly Conservation surveyed reports from throughout the country and discovered the insect appeared in nine out of ten gardens.

The second most frequent visitor was its close relative the small white. Making up the rest of the top five were the red admiral, the peacock and the small tortoiseshell, all of which feed on nettles and were reported in more than seven out of ten gardens.

In the North, however, researchers were surprised to discover the peacock was the most commonly reported, turning up in almost 90 per cent of gardens compared with 76 per cent in the south.

A similar trend was true of red admiral and peacock.

Painted lady, which had a bumper year in the region this summer, was in the next batch of most frequently seen butterflies nationally, a list which also included the holly blue, meadow brown and comma, the latter of which is increasingly been seen in the North-East and North Yorkshire.

Survey work also revealed the advance of one of the country's most spectacular insects, the humming-bird hawk-moth. It tends to be a creature of southern England but is an increasingly frequent sight in the North-East.

Grey and orange, the moth has a wingspan of two and a quarter inches and feeds on geraniums, honeysuckles, petunias, perwinkles and verbenas.

It used to be that only about 50 were reported in Britain each year, although in 1947, a staggering 4,250 arrived from the south of France.

Survey work by the organisation also revealed that the wall butterfly has been seen in 20 per cent of gardens in northern Britain, whereas only half as many people saw it in south-east England.