Here's my 2p worth. TL: Balls Wood - add Silver-washed Fritillary Broxbourne Wood - add Marbled White, Small Copper Hexton Chalk Pit - add Brown Argus, Marbled White Pegsdon Hills - add Brown Argus, Dingy Skipper, Green Hairstreak, Small Copper Sharpenhoe Clappers - add Small Blue Telegraph Hill - a...

The photo shows a 3rd instar larva at rest on a honeysuckle stem near Bedgebury in Kent. Well done, you. :) I've searched for these in a Hertfordshire wood for the past two years and found nothing. I've not looked yet this year because I assumed it was too early for the larvae to be a reasonable si...

Please excuse my pedantry, but is the newly-published Checklist authoritative? Where a discrepancy exists between it and the NBN Gateway , who is 'correct'? For example, the latter gives the preferred name for Large Blue as Phengaris arion (although Maculinea arion is also considered to be 'correctl...

During this evening's Autumn episode of BBC1's The Great British Year (available here ), a Red Admiral was shown feeding on a fallen plum. The accompanying commentary was: "She might well die when the cold strikes but she's already laid her eggs, so a new generation will emerge next year"....

A short but interesting item on this morning's Shared Planet discussed the preferred habitat of the Duke of Burgundy and its move from woodland to scrub.

The programme is available here, with the Dukes appearing at around 04:00.

Paul

That photo of the egg is absolutely amazing, both for the subject matter and for the photographic quality. I assumed that it had been taken using an MP-E 65mm lens, but the EXIF says otherwise. How the heck did you manage a shot like that with a 150mm lens? Were extension tubes involved, or a supple...

This species does have a few synonyms. See here:
http://data.nbn.org.uk/speciesInfo/taxo ... 0000038576

Click on the 'Synonyms' box near the bottom of the page to expand the list.

Paul

Thanks for the explanation, chaps. Sorry for the false alarm.

Paul

A small problem: In the Species-Specific Forums, the topic 'Long-tailed Blue' is shown in red, as though it contains unread articles. However, when I click on it I see the message: .There are no topics or posts in this forum'. Returning to the higher-level menu the topic is still shown in red. I'm u...

Not my sighting, but I've just read on the BC Herts & Middx sightings page that a fresh male Orange-tip was seen this afternoon on Harpenden Common.

A pretty good programme. It didn't begin too well, when my equal least-favourite presenter described a male Common Blue as 'sunning herself', but the rest of the hour was very watchable.

Equally interesting are the mini-programmes featuring Nick Baker on the Red Button at various times until Monday.

Hi, Pete. It's now 24 hours after your initial changes and response times have fallen drastically without any ill effects that I can see. I don't know what 'shadow' effect you're referring to; all images look the same to me now as they always did, but they load an order of magnitude faster and the s...

If you could let me know how this particular link performs when things are running slow I'd appreciate it. No problem. I've just loaded that page a dozen or so times, and response times ranged from 5 to 13 seconds. The average was around 7 seconds, I'd say. Before clicking Submit for this post, I c...

For some time I've also been experiencing long delays when loading pages, but I've kept quiet about it for fear that the problem was either my connection or the network rather than the site server. Firefox is my usual browser but when things become unacceptably slow I often try IE. There's never any...

I'l try again in a couple of weeks. If I have any success, I'll report back. Well I did try again, a couple of times, and my luck didn't improve. And now that Pete's captive larvae are pupating, I'm resigned to the fact that my searching time has run out. This year I'll have to hope that I can find...

You can do no better than visiting the BC Park Corner Heath http://butterfly-conservation.org/2401-1941/park-corner-heath-east-sussex.html and adjacent Rowland Wood http://butterfly-conservation.org/2401-1942/rowland-wood-east-sussex.html reserves just down the road. From the Park Corner Heath page...

It's below the Species List, at the bottom left of the site's home page. You'll probably have to scroll right down to find it.

Paul

If this were a normal year, then you'd be hard-pressed to find a Peacock right now (although I saw one yesterday myself!). I hope that clears things up. Perhaps I should add a "health warning" to anything showing flight times! Sorry, Pete. I'd forgotten how early in the year they normally...

A minor point, but Peacock seems to be missing from the species 'Flying This Week'.

Paul

BC has issused this statement regarding the spraying.

Paul