Like all butterflies that over winter as a pupa, the forming up and hatching each year will vary by upto 6 weeks, last year we had 30 degrees in February, this year we had to wait to 30th March for mid-20s temps. in 2020 Dukes and Glanvilles were well out by late-April, the Glanville larvae have onl...

The works at Hutchinsons Bank have now finished, here are a few pictures of the lovely new Bigger Scrape and banks, made as part of the Brilliant Butterflies project. Will be a couple of years before it establishes to its best. Chalkhill, Adonis, Small Blues will use them. DSC00082s.JPG DSC00093s.JP...

Yes checked most webs are deep under the snow, so sheltered from the very cold wind and temps, also as its a North and East wind, the drop from New Addington protects the cutting to a great extent from the wind. I fear for the Other UK populations, even the Channel Islands have had cold temps, and t...

In todays sun i checked the marked Glanville Fritillary webs at Hutchinsons Bank, most are now active, with larvae easily found sunning themselves on dead leaves etc. The webs in the favoured location in the cutting are more in shade at this time of year, but the larvae are still visible, in the 2nd...

While monitoring the cutting at Hutchinsons Bank for Glanvilles, you can see why they like the bank, gets warm and sunny even in January, the favoured spot gets a bit of shade, its being tackled soon. Then my First Butterfly of the Decade and year. A Peacock in warm gate area at the Fairchildes entr...

I know glanvilles are ready to wake up from the start of the new year,Im about to check the webs again at mid-day, to see which ones are active, if its just the sheltered webs, or all of them. At least at Hutch we can easily monitor the webs, i think the IOW ones are less easy to monitor. It will be...

The Glanville larvae are awake at Hutchinsons Bank, 3 webs in the hot spot in the cutting, other webs were not active at 2pm, but the sun was going down. Larvae were active January 29th in 2020, so noticed 8 days earlier this year, but was my first visit to the site this year.

The Painted Lady that emerge from the Kits are usually undersized [due to the paste food they eat as larvae], and the numbers realeased each year, and the numbers seen are so low in non Painted Lady years, when I would expect 100s to be seen every year in each schools area. So i dont think they have...

In the south we may find in a few years that the Large Tortoiseshell is seen more often than the Small Tortoiseshell.

Great the WIltshire colony is still going, hopefully there were a few females there.

Its 5 sites in Surrey, one or 2 in Kent, and the Wiltshire one so its doing well on the mainland again, hopefully it will follow the Jersey Tigers in expansion.

lovely upperside shot of the female Clouded Yellow

Yes we still have to save any eggs at Featherbed Lane Verge, luckily the cut blackthorn was not destroyed, it was dumped in the hedge, so eggs are intact but hard to recover. Brown Hairstreaks have continued to expand into Kent, and were found on the Holwood estate, 1km from Jackass Lane. It looks l...

Our Local Glanvilles were on 3 sites in 2020, although visitors from afar couldnt get to visit as usual, but i saw them at 3 Surrey sites and the Kent site. I didnt get to the Wrecclesham colony this year. The first sighting was 2nd May with this male. DSC08051s.JPG They had a good year too, and 21 ...

The only Dukes i saw this year were the small overlooked colony at Chapel Bank, we did get photos of a pairing too

Looks like a sawfly larva to me

The Marsh Frit in the photo is a male. They must be in the area so any great management they will move in, with the other close relatives ive studied, there seems to be a 75% male 25% female split unless its a very small population when its near to the 50/50 split or more females. As big batch layer...

Brown Hairstreaks are starting to come down low at Hutchinsons Bank now, with at least 4 seen today spread across the whole site, i didnt have time to check the better areas, ie featherbed lane verge for them.

Lovely shots of the Small Blues Bugboy :D They've had a cracking season in 2020 - back in the first brood they were crawling all over Martin Down :shock: 8) Very kind of you to offer up a bit of your sweat for them :D Have a goodun and stay safe Wurzel Small Blue numbers are down at Hutchinsons fro...

Lace Border Moth

A lovely Female Clouded Yellow, all the ones that flew through Hutchinsons Bank recently were male, so no chance of offspring in a months time from those.