Well I called it...but it wasn't that difficult to call. My 30th species snapped in the 3 fields behind us was always likely to be a Clouded Yellow. Saw my first one there on Monday evening but it flew off even before I could get the camera out. Pics below were taken around 6:20 pm tonight. They're ...

Excellent - thanks very much both.

He'll be really chuffed to get a positive ID...and I promise I won't take the credit

I am definitely dragging him into the world of butterflies. He's already sent me Holly Blue pics from his garden with wings more open than I've ever achieved.

Neither a butterfly nor a moth, but this dragonfly visited my brother's garden in West Hull over the weekend.

He didn't manage a shot directly over the top of it before it flew off.

Can anyone positively ID from these snaps ?

Cheers as always if so.

Brown Hairstreaks seem to congregate in the biggest and oldest oak that sits at the corner point of all 3 fields behind us. This tree is Purple central too.

Much fresher Small Copper than yesterday's.

Thanks a lot both.

That'll definitely be a Footman then !

It did look like a large pumpkin seed, if that would swing it Dingy's way.

Cheers

Hi all, Saw this white almost almond-shaped moth this evening. Looks fringed with yellow but could be the evening light. Taken just after 6 pm. That's a bramble leaf it's on, so not too short even if not very wide (when wings closed). As always any advice on what it might be very much appreciated. T...

First - just to agree with everyone on Allan's ear of wheat moth. Amazing ! It was too clammy to go on a very long walk today. So I just stuck with the fields over the back. Did a few circuits in late morning into early afternoon and then went back around 4:30pm. A few butterflies braved the earlier...

Michael Blencowe has recently started uploading a set of beginners guides to the butterflies found in the county for the Sussex Wildlife Trust. I appreciate that the vast majority of you know this stuff already, but there are bits on here that still help me as a bit of a novice for sure. But my obvi...

Probably seen more Small Tortoiseshells than Chaffinches this year though.....

I'm in mid Sussex - about 7 miles north of Brighton. There's good walking circuits around me that mean I can get on to the South Downs pretty quickly or track streams or go through local woods on the Weald. So I see a decent range of birds and insects on my walks, but for whatever reason we don't ge...

You haven't just stuck lots of paper STs on there just to make me jealous have you Chris ?

It would take me 3 years down here to see that many !

She didn't hang about long - but nice to see a brown in with the yellow this afternoon.

Great day for a long walk yesterday. Started with a good few circuits of my local fields and then carried on down to Wolstonbury as I'd not been there for a while. Luckily we're in a good area for Brown Hairstreaks, so these fields behind us have decent numbers. I only saw females last year but this...

Many thanks for that aeshna.

They were whizzing about tonight too !

We have a bunch of moths that go absolutely manic from late afternoon for a good few hours. They look small and quite orangey in flight and they love whizzing round our beech tree but then going all over the place. I'd guess there's about 10 of them, but it's hard to say because they're like Billy W...

The good thing with my WFH lunch hour is I get to walk round my local fields for 50 minutes. The bad thing is it is only 50 mins. So when you see your first ever male Brown Hairstreak towards the end of that time and it decides to fly up higher then you can't really hang around waiting for it to pos...

On the clearwing shot, the female Brown Hairstreak has her antennae held pretty gun-barrel straight together.

Is that quite a common position for them on butterflies at rest ?

Can't say I've noticed them like that, but to be brutally honest and frank I've not been looking that closely.

Took a wander round the local fields again this afternoon. There are, I'm estimating, 8-10 times as many summer brood Common Blues. I may be underestimated the spring numbers but I didn't see many at all. The really big numbers amongst the blues seem to be Brown Argus though. They must outnumber CBs...

Cheers as always Alan.

That makes it a grand total of 17 folders of identified moth species (a lot of those courtesy of this site !)

Just a few species to go then....

As it's wet play here, thought I'd do a bit of admin. I still haven't summoned up the courage to look at the state of my pension pot since the end of March, but I do feel a bit safer trying to catalogue old pictures. This one dived for foliage so I only managed one trademark blurry shot but I think ...