14th May 2011: Today I went for a walk with a friend to Strawberry Banks in Gloucestershire. This is a small nature reserve that prooved to be good for butterflies. There were a few Dingy Skippers and Small Blues on the wing, and unlike other places I've seen Small Blue, the Kidney Vetch was obviou...

Hi Mellyboots, I'm also a non-driver (located in Birmingham) .There are many excellent places that you can get to from Worcester which are excellent for butterfly watching. The top spot at this time of year I would say is the Wyre Forest (train to Kidderminster followed by bus to Buttonoak). See my ...

30th April 2011 : Back in my home county of Sussex for a rather decent butterfly watching session today. A short stop at Kithurst hill revealed an unexpected 12 species, including a Duke , Dingy Skippers (nectaring on Bugle) and some lovely fresh Green Hairstreaks . Adela reaumurella was in abundan...

Hi Hugh, welcome to the forum. I have a 70-300mm lens which I find is nice for birds, but for butterflies it's a little long although perfectly useable. Getting enough depth of field can be difficult so ideally something shorter might serve you well on the butterfly front. Not everyone likes short l...

Thanks all for your input and comments.

Alex

I'm lucky that my local library has many unaffordable books such as Birds of the Western Palearctic , however one unaffordable title they do not have is Butterflies of Kenya by Larsen. It's £375 on amazon... Last month I was in Kenya and have a few pictures of butterflies. Most would not land at all...

28th August 2010: In search of Brown Hairstreaks I had a look around Grafton Wood in Worcestershire. The Orchard appeared Hairstreak free due to the direction of the wind but the sheltered side of the woods allowed brilliant views of the females. At one point I had three together on a bramble bush ...

23rd July 2010: White-letter Hairstreaks only seem to turn up when I am least expecting them and this one was no exception. Found after work nectaring on Malvern Common, Worcestershire. I have seen scattered Elm in the area, but none on the common itself. It may well be there though. WLH1 230710.jp...

11th July 2010: A very hot day and I found myself at Broadway, Worcestershire. With no particular plan I had a look at the hill behind the village which turned out to be rather rich downland. Notable finds were Bee Orchid var. trolli , Prickly Restharrow and Pyramidal Orchids with a large variety o...

4th July 2010: I was pleased to get a number of records down on paper for the Sussex butterfly atlas today in Binsted Wood and the start of the downs north of Arundel. The woods held loads of White Admirals and photographing these is something I've never done particularly well. I was pleased with t...

3rd July 2010: A trip back down to the South and I decided to visit Botany Bay in Chiddingfold Forest. It's a well known spot, but one which I hadn't been to before. My aim was to see male iris on the ground, which I succeeded in doing, previously I had only seen them up high or on sap runs. There ...

26th June 2010: A failed attempt to locate Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries on Cannock Chase recently led to trying again. It's now post-optimum viewing time for these and only one out of the handful that I saw had good colour left in it. They were flightly, as one would expect in good weather and...

25th June 2010:

After work I took an hour to enjoy a walk on the Malvern Hills. There were not many butterflies in evidence, although this Ringlet posed nicely for a photograph on the side of North Hill.
Ringlet

12th June 2010: I decided to visit Cannock Chase for the first time today. There were good numbers of Green Hairstreaks seen, although all were losing their scales. They were mainly seen around Bilberry which is quite possibly their foodplant here although many other plants were in evidence that mi...

21st May 2010: A trip to the Wyre Forest. This is a large area of woodland with a number of woodland types within in. The more open and rough parts were the most butterfly rich with species such as Dingy Skipper , and Green Hairstreak seen in low numbers. In a northern part of the woods I found a f...

17th May 2010 : This will be my last day of Sussex butterfly watching for a while, but oh what a day! Walking over the Downs taking in some little visited sections, 13 species were seen. This included freshly emerged Small and Adonis Blues , a Duke and Dingy Skippers everywhere on the warm side of ...

27th April 2010 : Had an excellent walk today through the woods and downs around Arundel. 12 species were noted for the new Sussex Butterfly Atlas including three separate colonies of Grizzled Skipper and one each of Dingy Skipper and Duke of Burgundy . Once I have got to grips with my new camera I...

I get the feeling that going out in the height of summer and taking the right shot would be easy - finding one now is difficult though! Have you looked through Flickr? Here are some that I found, possibly not exactly what you're after, but there must be something out there... Painted Lady: http://ww...

A 'thread' per member in a 'Diaries' subforum I think would work well purely so that checking them is easy. I notice Pete that your blog runs with the latest entry at the top. This makes it difficult to read through entries in order as the season progresses. Here is an example of a caving club logbo...

Wouldn't it be better if people kept a diary as a forum thread though? Say for example there are three or four diaries you would like to keep up to date with, if they appear on the forum it's easy to see when new material is added... one click and you can check them all plus all the usual forum thin...