Mark Colvin wrote:Hi John,
It sure is. It's a female in transitional winter to spring plumage.
Kind regards. Mark

I hope that she is a resident because there is a bamboo lined stream about 400 yds away where the the dragonflies hang out.

Having a Venetian blind in the way does not improve my photography. Could this be a Reed Bunting pretending it's a finch? I haven't seen one since Minsmere in about 1962.

I just wish I could take butterfly photos that stand out at well as yours does. Apart from the noisy/messy wording which Gary explains I am completely puzzled by "filter." In the days of film cameras a filter was a piece of glass that we put in front of the lens, usually UV. Nowadays with ...

How do all these surveys join up? I haven't been asked for my figures yet for 2012 for the 3 grids I record so I assume that the BC survey hasn't been done yet. The Meadow Browns here were about half of 2011's massive uncountable numbers.

[quote="Susie"]Yes, there was a fee for the photography classes last year. I always considered it very expensive compared to the excellent photography days UK Butterflies used to run. /quote] Thanks for that info because I have raised the whole question of membership and [lack of] benefits...

Was there a fee for the two photographers' mornings last year, apart from the normal admission charge, or is this something new?

I don't like my 7D for the single reason that I find manual focus through the few-finder difficult. For everything else I love it. The manual focus is probably down to my eyesight and the fact that I wear varifocal specs but it proved to be such a problem for me that I now use a 1D3 with a split scr...

While discussing birds, here on Mull I am surprised by the list of absentees (or rarities): Black-headed Gull, Moorhen, MAGPIE (that is an amazing absentee), Jay Rook (apparently does occur but not yet seen by me - instead we have Ravens by the hundred) and no doubt many others. But we seem to have...

MikeOxon wrote:

padfield wrote:Eatern [sic] baton blue

It looks intact to me - no nibbles out of the wings
Mike

It's this modern habit of phonetic spelling that causes problems, it's an Eton baton blue (probably on holiday during the parliamentary recess)

I really like these little fellows for they are the culprits that got me interested in butterflies and conservation. One day I was walking along a four year old hedge line that I had planted, that bounded my field, when I noticed these little brown butterflies popping out in front of me every yard o...

So where do I find it? This morning I saw mention of one of this week's species of which I happen to have a recent daguerreotype but by the time I had found the file the posting no longer appeared under Recent Posts and I can't trace the thread. Do I need to slip someone a fiver to be allowed to play?

I also was sufficiently fooled by these larvae to send an image to the county butterfly recorder

Thanks. I had got as far as a blue but since my 1970 edition of Higgin's and Riley's Field Guide appears not to list that species I came to a grinding halt.

Can anyone name this very poor snap that I took in the Garden of Gethsemane a couple of weeks ago?

I don't understand why we have been importing ash seedlings and whips. The native tree is virtually a weed in many places and must be one of the easiest trees to propagate. The government should have introduced bio-security to the standards of Australia and New Zealand, decades ago. In recent years ...

David M wrote: I'd go further: it's a criminal offence.

But in our sick society some criminal offences are seen as "art"

On my patch about 30 miles NE of Hedge End, the numbers are down on last year but nothing to cause concern unlike my non-existent [un] Common Blues.

If its bum looked like this then it was a Silver Y, there seems to be a bigger than usual migration this year

How is "single image" defined? Is it one .jpg or one butterfly?

Insect Photography. Art and Techniques - John Bebbington 159pp. Paperback. The Crowood Press Ltd., 2012 ISBN 978 1 84797 378 8 £16.99 Bebbington - Insect Phography.jpg The book caught my eye because of the photograph on the cover of a “butterfly on a stick.” The picture is of a quality that I have n...