The progress of the White-letter Hairstreak project by Liz Goodyear and Andrew Middleton was presented at a Herts & Middx BC branch meeting this afternoon. The findings may be quite surprising to some of us: WLH appears to be much more common than generally thought and (for much of the UK) where...

Hello Guy, I did have doubts that this was the actual spine, as may have been apparent from my hesitant language. It was not forward-pointing as Lafranchis illustrates and was not the same shape, being rather too curved compared to the straight-looking spine shown by Lafranchis. Higgins & Riley ...

Guy, you were right, I was looking at the wrong spine, although the books carefully omit to mention that there is a whopping great spine on the midleg whereas the foreleg hooked spine is almost invisible, being small, darker in colour (or so it appears) and pointing backwards often obscured from vie...

I have looked in some detail at the so-called argus spine, and am still confused and unconvinced by what the books say. Rather than repeat myself here, this is a link to my argus page where my observations are given in some detail, together with some close-up shots of the spine. http://www.butterfli...

Thanks, I was vaguely thinking about a Canon 7D for the video capability, but I will now look deeper into its compatibility with the Sigma 150 I currently have on my Canon 20D. I’m not sure why you are having problems with the 20D/Sigma 150 combination. I find they work together quite well (some pho...

I got this for Christmas:

http://www.pemberleybooks.co.uk/cgi-bin ... item=15060

But then my family know just how limited my horizons are…

One day I hope to use the book as a field guide.

Roger

I just came across this forum topic and thought these articles (link below) might be of interest. The first few articles concern the USA where Nabokov clearly spent much of his life, but the last one is more European in flavour, being a mild critique of Higgins & Riley's work (which demonstrates...

Of general interest regarding WLH, Liz Goodyear and Andrew Middleton (they who undertook the detailed study of Purple Emperors) of Herts & Middx BC have been undertaking country-wide research into WLH for the last three years and are soon to announce their preliminary findings. From what I under...

That's a great Safflower upperside photo, Guy, of an immaculate fresh specimen with that beautiful charcoal grey colouring so characteristic of the male this species.

And you took this with a compact-type camera?

Roger

Guy, you may well be right about fagi . Having looked again at the postdiscal line and compared it to my photos that I am reasonably confident are alcyone , the bump in the middle is possibly not as pronounced as it should be for alcyone . However, there is no “bite” out of the middle of this line, ...

One vote for alcyone , but not a very confident one, as always with these two species. The post-discal line usually has a clear bite out of it in the middle for fagi , whereas alcyone has more of a pronounced bump, so this suggests alcyone . The area around the unf ocellus is usually clear for alcyo...

Here's a photo if idas of the form calliopsis which I find quite regularly in the Alps. It has the same chequering of the fringes and the veins extend inward. In reality it is rather bluer than this, although not of the violet-blue of thersites , but I think this shot caught the light rather too wel...

This thread prompted me to recall a very strange visit from a Southern White Admiral in Var, France, last year. Strange, because it was at 23.13 pm! It was fascinated by the outside light and its behaviour was very moth-like, fluttering around the light. I tried taking a photo using flash (as below)...

Interesting aricia , no doubting that it is artaxerxes but I have never seen one, even a male, without ANY trace of upperside orange lunules. The thersites looks quite unlike the ones I see in Var - the border is much thicker and slightly chequered and the veins extend inwardly. No doubt you have se...

Aegeria is actually the nominate from - it is the subspecies tircis that we find in the UK. I still find it hard to get my head round the fact that the species we grew up with (and a Speckled Wood made a great impression on me when I was seven) is just a subspecies. Sounds almost as if it is classif...

A few observations that hopefully may help. #5 looks 100% aglaja to me; just expanding a little on what Guy said - the ino margins are very rounded (and continuous in ino – one of the differences compared to Marbled Fritillary B. daphne where the black border is usually not continuous) and the black...

I should have used a “tongue in cheek” smiley, especially as most of what I put up on UKB Forums is deadpan serious. I mentioned it because I have had five or so UKB members asking me about Provence. I have built up quite a good knowledge of the region and have found several “hotspots” – last May a ...

Should anyone be interested, I have just completed the update for the Butterflies of France website (link as below) for 2009, adding several hundred new photos and a few new species pages. There are many question marks, so any comments would be welcome. 2009 has been a good year, I think, for butter...

I recall seeing Wood White at Bernwood some 20 years ago, as well as Black Hairstreaks which I only saw with the aid of binoculars.

I have a copy of the Bristow book Roger refers to. I bought it from new and it is still pristine as I never take books into the field, although I rarely refer to it these days. It is in hardback and has very detailed distribution maps of each species and the historical information is equally detaile...