Eris wrote:
The add says they are captive bred from wood-walton fen stock. I thought this would be illegal but maybe I'm wrong.

Actually, and rather more accurately, the description should read:~

Wood Walton butterflies are from captive bred stock...

I love a happy ending but, it was not to be for some reason for both pupae. The absent pupa with no sign of where it's gone is a real puzzle. The reinforced area of silk where the pupa's cremaster was firmly embedded is clearly intact. Had a bird ripped it off the final segment or two of the pupa's ...

Walking about some scrubby fields on the Island of Elba back in 1976, as I got into the car I noticed what appeared to be a fully grown Lycaenid larva on my sock. No idea how it got there but, I enclosed it in a match box with a flower head of some Vetch growing nearby. I used to smoke back then ~ n...

CC, are you suggesting that some highly qualified academics, lack a bit of common. :lol: kind Regards Gruditch Would I ever ... Hush your mouth Gruditch .... and open your eyes if your query is genuine .... ;) .. ..... that if they were all followed to the letter there would be no reintroductions a...

There's a real danger that amateurs who don't know what they're doing will have no success and actually diminish any captive-bred gene pool as a result. - Pete Hmmmm.... that is of course a real possibility. As I have observed more than several times over the past half century, there is an even BIG...

I have really enjoyed visiting this impressive thread from time to time. Always something interesting to see ~ well done ~ magnificent effort.
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When breeding british Swallowtails back then, I made an observation which I published in the Entomologits' Record about 1970. I have not seen mention of the observation before or since although others may have observed it when raising larvae on growing Milk Parsely ( Peucedanum palustre ). When a Sw...

Cotswold Cockney: ....Same with the Norfolk Swallowtails before the laws were introduced..... Didn’t you tell me once John that you found British Swallowtail eggs on Angelica? And Black Hairstreak eggs on Elm which initially you had assumed had to be WL Hairstreak until they emerged and all became ...

Hmmmm... Back in the 1970s, I along with several others bred numerous generations as 'support' for WW Stock.... then, maybe now too, they cannot survive there without this kind of support. I must have bred several thousand over the years and passed many early stages and adults to other Butterfly Ent...

If you look at this first picture of Pete Eeles' » Thu Jul 01, 2010 7:03 pm << posting, that is how a healthy pupa appears a few hours before successful emergence ~ no evidence of 'voids' in the pupa case and more detail visible of the wing markings.. http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/phpBB/download/fi...

He's got to come out tomorrow, I think (opinions welcome - still no white spots). Here he is at 8.00pm tonight: http://www.guypadfield.com/images2010/irispupadiocletian106.jpg Thanks for the support! I've got very good footage of the fluid movements in the pupa today and it was not time lost in the...

dgreves wrote:Today I found them tucking in to a Burnet Moth caterpillar:



Further along the coast another insect was evening the score:

That lower picture is truly remarkable.
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which gave it a distinct red colour when in flight. Depending on size, two possibilities. Larger ....Red Underwing Moth ( a frequent day Flyer particularly if disturbed ) Smaller... Cinnabar Moth .... I have often seen the beautiful Red Underwing flying during the day and at first sighting, a Red A...

Sharpenhoe Clappers (just west of Barton-le-Clay, Beds) in one hour between 1650 and 1750 hours on 29th June total of 15 DG Fritillary sightings but not one of them landed! Jack Probably males only madly chasing around looking for females which have yet to emerge. Never stop that process until .......

I’ve been looking at the weather charts. On 18th, 19th & 20th June there were brisk winds straight from Norway. The winds subsequently became light. Jack It's not only AirCraft Pilots that take adavantage of the Jet Stream ~ eh Jack ... :) A very fresh looking specimen in the pictures ~ good im...

Looking again at your "Bug" pictures, on the fourth one down there appears to be a freshly emerged parasitical fly or wasp... note pale colouring. Not so; it's a fly of the genus... (the name escapes me...shall look it up later...) which would have been attracted by the already pungent sm...

It did occur to me, CC, that the purple emperor vibration reaction you introduced me to would easily be sufficient to shake off a shield bug before it got its proboscis in. Of course, I will keep checking my emperor daily, and will gently move away any likely predators to a different bit of the woo...

Yes, Shield Bugs are predatory on the earlier stages of butterflies and other insects. In the field, I have sometimes found a Shield Bug ( also known as Stink Bug in the UK ) with its hypodermic like proboscis into a larva of a Small Tortoiseshell in the colony webb. Safety in numbers but, not for t...

Guy, now it's obviously fully hardened off, try lightly touching the suspended pupa gently with length of grass leaf. Almost a gentle tickle....:) These pupae can shake themselves so vigorously that the branch and even the bush will shake too. I suspect this is a defense mechanism against a foraging...

Grass feeder larva .... and water sipper ... apparently.... :) Attractive moths... strongly sexually dimorphic. That larva looks near fully grown ... Found just about everywhere when I was a lad back in the 1950s. Long time since I've seen the moth which was once a common sight near my house... Gold...