Marsh Frits have started to emerge at Hutchinsons Bank today, we have been monitoring caterpillars since February.

millerd wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2023 6:41 pm Adonis Blues were flying down at Denbies today, and in reasonable numbers which may help relieve some of the concerns about the species there.

Seems to have been hatchings today, Adonis and Marsh Frits amongst them. Its great there are Adonis on Denbies in reasonable numbers.

Duke Caterpillars go to the base of the foodplant during the day and feed at night, so would find cowslips/primrose if its in the turf. DGFs PBFs etc do not lay on the foodplant but often put an egg nearby to it. SWFs also on Wood. The female egglaying pic shows cowslip very near. If it had been on ...

Grizzled Skipper day at Hutchinsons Bank, the first real numbers of the year with 5.
Painted Lady at Chapel Bank along with other Butterflies

Yes plenty of it going on that day. The Roman Snails at it too.
A great way to spend the coronation Sunday watching Dukes.

The first Dingy photos of the year too later in the Cutting at Hutchinsosn Bank

A good day today at Hutchinsons & Chapel Banks. 4 different Duke of Burgundy pairs at the same time this afternoon when the sun came out, with those 8 busy for an hour, we counted others making at least 13 at the same time.

Are Dukes having a good year, today at Chapel Bank we had a female being chased by 3 males at the same time, with many others yards away.

Secondly, that's a beautiful caramel ab. gracilens Duchess, Martin. :) :mrgreen: Dave Thanks Dukes seem to be all over the site [Chapel Bank] now, they have moved out of the fritillary clearing, we had a singleton reported from Hutch last year too. Lots of male Dukes various markings through to the...

Pictures from todays Surrey BC Walk to Hutchinsons And Chapel Banks Not a lot to start with but a Marsh Fritillary Larva in the cutting MarshLarva -1.jpg then a walk over to Chapel Bank for the Dukes, at least 20 around at the moment Duke Female -1.jpg Duke Female -2.jpg Other butterflies were posin...

Again from Hutchinsons Bank, a group of us were photographig this pairing, and missed the Narrow-Bordered Bee Hawkmoth, vary rare in the South East. We found 3 webs that are now hibernating to produce next years butterflies. Despite the drought there was still lots of green plantain around all summe...

I managed to see Black Hairstreak at Epsom Common, during a busy time, a few photos taken this year, hopefully will get a full day there in 2023.

Seems that there will be a rail strike that day now.

The Bromley Kent Brown Hairstreak map March 2022 shows the spread of this species back into Kent.

Sorry to hear about your Hard Drive. I have a 3TB drive in the same state, the trouble with big drives they are hard to back up all the info other than to another Hard Drive or 100s of Blu-Rays they at least have 25GB per disk or 50GB on the duel layer ones. My Segate hard drives did however have a ...

My photo of an ab that was flying at Hutchinsons Bank in the cutting scrape area for a couple of weeks during June.

Again my Small Blues at Hutchinsons Bank the numbers were down this year, but was still seen for over 12 weeks on the transect. This from a good day on the reserve.

Spurge and Bedstraw Hawks along with others in that group of European Spingids, are surface pupating species, like the Elephant Hawk, and although they breed here in Summer, it is very doubtful they can survive our winters at present. Hummingbird Hawks have taken to hibernate as adult moths rather t...

There were good populations of both Dark Green Fritillary and Silver Washed Fritillary in the Fritillary Clearing At Chapel Bank nature reserve in 2021. Larvae were even easy to find a few weeks before, on every visit they were seen crossing paths etc. Six pairs were often seen at the same time with...

Im lucky to be on the Doorstep of Hutchinsons Bank, and have monitored this colony since 2011, there were 23 larval webs in 2020/21 season, although the weather held back hatching until mid-May. I managed to get a good photo of male and female side by side. There were over 80 Glanvilles seen on the ...

An afternoon at Bookham today to see how some of the youngsters are going (the forecast promised some sun but this was predictably wrong until it was too late) threw up an unfortunate little surprise. One of the White Admiral cats has made a grave error of judgement and chosen to forgo hibernation....