http://butterfly-conservation.org/3114-7566/has-warming-weather-wrong-footed-the-wall.html Many of you have probably already seen this but it does make a facsinating read. I remember growing up in north west london green belt and used to spend many a weekend/summer holiday out and about where the Wa...

Thanks guys. In all my time this is the only individual that has ever posed for me. All my other sightings are little silver dots flitting around the tops of oak trees!

A couple of shots of the Purple Hairstreak tonight. Not the best conditioned individual but I do love the headon shot

Good luck with your 2015 targets, looks like you and me have similar plans for the new year! Fingers crossed for good weather.

Maximus wrote:Some great shots Bugboy, especially considering that some of then are taken just off the A406

Haha, closer to the A104

The Common Blue:

Beautiful Purple Hairstreak pictures, I love their hairy eyes!

Hadn't noticed before but going through my pictures for this it seems I took loads in 2007 and this year and very little inbetween. I guess I was excited about my new Digital technology, have hundreds of slides going back into the mid 90's but need to find a good service to digitize them. Anyway, to...

Green Veined white Tuesday:

Yes, although the reasons for the breeding program for the macaws is the same old story of human encroachment and exploitation for the pet trade, Many of the parrots at the breeding center were ex pets. It's all swings and roundabouts. On the plus side the released populations are doing very well now.

Last set of pics.

Well after a week at the breeding center I travelled down to one of the release sites with a friend and 10 macaws. We flew down in a twin propeller engine plane to the southern pacific peninsula and changed planes to a single engine plane. To fit the macaws onto the second plane with us we had to re...

Gray Ministreak, Ministrymon azia surely?

Thanks, I knew it would be a long shot to get a firm Id. I might dig out the slides and see if I took any more pics, pretty sure I did but this pic was probably the best one which is why it got scanned and not any more. If memory serves I seem to remember there was a small group of them fluttering a...

Thanks Guy, and yes you're right, that does look like a good candidate for that little metalmark. The pictures I remember really don't do them justice, the irridescence on them is amazing, especially when flitting around the undergrowth catching rays of sun!

Hi, I have been going through some old photo's recently and came across this unidentified Fritillary, taken at Ljubljana Zoo in Slovenia in 2004. I think it's a Mellicta, possibly M. aurelia, Nickerl's Fritillary. I do remember it being small, smaller than a male gatekeeper. I was wondering if anyon...

Going through some pics on my computer I found my holiday pictures from way back in 2005 in Costa Rica and I thought it would be rude not to share the lepidoptera themed ones on here. It was a 3 week working holiday, volunteering on a project to release captive bred Scarlet Macaws back to the wild. ...

Some pics of the area where I saw the Hairstreak, as you can see there is no cutting back being done. The hedge is mostly Blackthorn with a few Hawthorn and patches of Dogwood, Wild Rose and Bramble, all pretty standard fare for an English hedgrow.

Since the sun was out today I thought I'd get a breath of fresh air and have a wander in my local patch. Been fighting a recurring bought of tonsilitis recently so not been out as much as I'd like. Mainly out for a bit of casual twitching but took a few pics of the area of the Brown hairstreak sight...

I've been in contact with Rob Smith from the Cambs & Essex branch and we plan to go on an egg hunt after the festive season. If there is anyone else in the area that wants to join us in the last week of December (date to be finalised) let us know. It will either be 27th, 28th or 31st.