White-letter hairstreak Time spent making observations and reporting has been very limited of late. For the best part of the last month or so, I’ve been undertaking the first part of my summer fieldwork; visiting my field sites at sunrise and sunset as part of some research to understand how noctur...

Thanks both. Yes, Wurzel - I think the difficulties associated with photographing the dorsal sides of this and many other species makes it more of an attractive prospect! We do like a challenge.. I've actually been working on some more in-flight photography that I hope to share at some point in the ...

Black hairstreak I managed to make a few visits to Ditchling common to catch up with black hairstreak adults, which began to emerge from 12th/13th June. Lots of activity spread across the site and an estimated 25-30 individuals seen at peak around 10 or so days later. Some enjoyable moments observi...

Thanks Pauline - I think there would be some value in running some field trips during the night. Partly beccause some species are only active at night as larvae, and also because its super interesting! It's easy to forget that butterflies only spend a short duration of their lives as adults..

Brown hairstreak At my local playing field, the brown hairstreak cats are getting on nicely and should be pupating soon. The main margin has been heavily cut back, with 75m of highly suitable habitat lost. Only one intact blackthorn plant remains along the main margin, where there had been around 7...

Black hairstreak The black hairstreaks that I'm monitoring in Sussex have been pupating this week. I returned late last week to undertake further UV torchlight searches and in addition to the four larvae that I had found previously, I located another two. At the beginning of the week I headed back ...

Just one word of caution for others copying this method. While UVA from a torch is fairly harmless, you should remember that your pupils are fully dilated at night and you can't, of course, see the actual UV. I've no idea how much is reflected off the leaves. I bought a pair of UV goggles, as used ...

Thanks all. I've been thinkink about how effective this could be for making some local population estimates, particularly for species like white-letter hairstreaks, which are particularly mobile and elusive as adults. Ben - I'd be keen to see how effective this would be for purple emperor cats. May ...

Hairstreaks at night The poor weather has been a great source of frustration over the past few weeks. I had intended on catching up with green hairstreak last week, but during any free time I had, rain was falling. I also spent a few days at Knepp surveying dung beetles and establishing some baseli...

Thanks again for the kind comments. On the 'wing rolling' of small blues, I did some more digging and saw that there are multiple purposes behind this, one of which is the specific anti-predator behaviour to create the illusion of a 'false head' when the tails move (in species with tails). An additi...

Blues and Dukes Last week I spent a morning or three at Kithurst meadow, West Sussex, in the hope that the Duke of Burgundy would make an appearance. It was clear from the state of the vegetation, that things were suffering from lack of warm weather and rainfall, with cowslips noticeably shorter an...

I spent 15 minutes checking on the progress of some brown hairstreak eggs at a local site, before my weekly food shop this morning. There is a very limited, but highly suitable patch of blackthorn, which yeilded a high density of eggs during a count back in December. Fortunately, I had marked all lo...

Thanks all. I appreciate the kind comments, and I'm glad you enjoyed the wide-angle, large depth-of-field shots. I'm thoroughly enjoying the challenges associated with composing these shots. ...Following immature stages in the field often feels like a thankless task - the necessary investment of tim...

I've been incredibly busy for the last few months, and I'm only just finding some time to get out and chase butterflies. As others have already highlighted; it's clear that the cold and dry weather has had quite a noticeable impact on emergences and activity, with timings delayed by a week or two co...

Thanks all. I was intrigued by all those tiny, pale creatures that were moving around by the ovum whilst the larva was emerging. Great to see the moment when the caterpillar finally dropped itself into the unfolding bud, where it will no doubt be much safer. I was also intrigued. I believe some of t...

From the data you have collected in previous years, are you able to tease out any predictors for predation? I've always presumed weather is the key factor in play (dictating predator activity), but wonder whether there is any interaction between weather and position/orientation/colour etc.. Your sho...

Thanks all. Delighted to have captured this! Ben - Yes, I have a real concern about the longevity of the cutting, I doubt it will be suitable for much longer, and I anticipate this will cause problems within a week. Relocating the larva to a fresh branch is a possibility, though it would rely on me ...

Time-lapse footage of white-letter hairstreak larva emergence - https://youtu.be/3dWRh7oSS_I Some context: Last week, I came across some arborists working on some roadside elm trees and asked if I could check some of the tree-top branches for any eggs. They kindly obliged and after 30 minutes of se...

Maximus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:13 pm Great sequence of shots of the emerging WLH larva, and in your lunchbreak too

Thank you! Yes, I was very fortunate with my timings..

I saw that Guy Padfield had managed to capture a shot of a freshly emerged WLH cat on Sunday, though he didn''t realise this until he got home ahd checked his images. I was determied to get my own shots if I had some luck! Today, I headed back out to check on some other eggs on my lunch break. First...