Hello all. We made a brief trip to the USA a couple of weeks ago, and I was impressed at how much this area of Virginia is a haven for beautiful butterflies. These pictures were taken off the Skyline Drive which runs along the Blue Ridge Mountains. Firstly, this beauty which I think I've identified ...

Thanks. It certainly looks like it.

Inspired perhaps by the thread about mounted tropical butterflies, I looked through my piccies from our recent South America trip and came across this which I snapped in Peru (not the best of pics I'm afraid): butterfly_pisaq_0625.jpg This was in the Sacred Valley at about 3,000m, in June (dry seaso...

Agreed. They may be exotic tropical specimens but they're very dead! Curiously, while I'm no expert, I can say, the lower left one bears a striking resemblance to the Cleopatra, Gonepteryx cleopatra , whilst the lower centre one vaguely suggests the Scarce Swallowtail Iphiclides podalirius . Both of...

Difficult for me, I'm not really into macro photography and I don't have a decent macro lens, so the best I can do is this rather feeble effort: Egg 01.jpg cropped: Egg 02.jpg and an attempt at sharpening: Egg 03.jpg For the purpose of scaling, the leaf was about 15mm wide at its widest. That makes ...

Hello, On a short walk today around our local Brown Hairstreak site, looking out for egg-laying females, but didn't see any. Perhaps it was too hot (over 27C !) and they all chose to stay in the treetops. But we did discover what looked very much like a BH egg on the blackthorn, but it was laid on a...

Not many in Sussex at the moment but we spotted two on Wolstonbury Hill (South Downs) today - the first we've seen this year. Maybe the main flush will come later in the month?

Thanks. We went back to the site this afternoon; no luck searching the blackthorn; I'm rather doubtful that this really is a Brown Hairstreak site. I'll go to the other place, where they are known to breed, some time in the next few days, and inspect the bushes there, at least I'll know what I'm loo...

Hi, I'm a newbie here and this is very much a shot in the dark. A Planning application has recently been announced for a development of 43 houses on a greenfield site on the edge of our town (Burgess Hill, W Sussex). This is an extension of an existing development of 73 houses already under construc...