Cheers Paul
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Let's hope that they can make a comeback this year
Cheers David
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
I've always been told that Fairies don't exist but hen you watch Wood Whites flying a little part of me always thinks that actually they do.
Cheers Philzoid
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
I need one of those OT roosting sites
The “Aristocrats”
14 White Admiral, 05-07-2016 Grovely Wood
Quite a good year for me in terms of White Admirals this year. They were never really around in huge numbers but I still saw more this year than last and also quite importantly I saw them at a couple of times at one site and at an additional site where I’d not encountered them before. They were a fortnight later than last year but this could have been due to a slower start but more likely because I didn’t get out looking for them until they’d been widely reported on UKB. Bentley seemed to hold similar numbers as last year if not slightly up but I only really did the one trip here during their flight time this year so it was difficult to really judge. At Grovely where I saw my first for the year I encountered a least 4 if not 7 individuals as I walked through the Wood which was up on last year and an encouraging sign.
For me the highlight of the White Admirals this year was a totally unexpected sighting down at Studland during the start of August while I was watching a number of butterflies all taking nectar from a Buddleia bush next to the ‘Discovery Centre’. This Buddleia, like most, seemed to act as an oasis bringing butterflies from all around, and I set up camp here and waited a technique similar to that used on safari when they wait by the water hole. Included in amongst the gentle feeding frenzy here were Grayling, Red Admirals and Painted Ladies when a greyish butterfly flew in and started nectaring. I couldn’t work out what it was at first as I didn’t expect to see this species this close to the coast, in a heath land habitat or feeding on Buddleia but when I focused in a White Admiral it indeed turned out to be.
15 Purple Emperor, 11-07-2016 Bentley Wood
This species was only 5 days later for me this year and by now the delayed start to the season was pretty much caught up, plus we were entering into a period (all too brief) of reasonably warm and sunny weather. I get the general impression that His Nibbs didn’t do as well this year as last? I could be mistaken but there didn’t seem to be as many reports from Fermyn and the huge numbers (100) recorded at the Knepp Estate (I think that’s what it was called?) were all aerial and I’m not aware of how the count this year compared to that of2014?
Still Bentley came up trumps for me and repaid my faith and obstinacy over the last couple of years with four PEs; 2 at the Switchback, 1 at Donkey Copse and another the Ralph McKintock memorial whilst I was watching White Letters flitting around the top of the Elm. The best Emperor was number one which came down and wandered about for a bit taking salts here and there in the middle of the path, showing off a little of the purple. Unfortunately number two which I managed to get really close to was in the shade and so the refracted rays only appeared black and the purple only came once the butterfly was further away and starting to show signs that He wanted to make a move.
Hopefully this will be the year when the ‘three year cycle’ is broken and there will be more grounded Emperors for me in 2016.
16 Red Admiral, 05-04-2015, Llanachaeron
This species had a massive difference between the emergence times in 2014 and those in 2015, in fact two and half months later! I finally saw my first in April at Llanachaeron on a visit to the outlaws and it was actually a relief to eventually see one. Up until this point I had only seen 4 other species of butterfly so late was the season running.
After this slow start things seemed to go well for the Red Admiral this year. It wasn’t exactly a fantastic year and I can certainly recall seeing many more in some years but there were reasonable numbers across the coming months. In fact on my first ever trip to East Blean a single Red Admiral was part of a species count for the day of three. They also seemed to pick up number wise in the later half of the season and visits to Bentley Wood, Studland and Shipton Bellinger threw up multiples. However the late November flourish that I witnessed a couple of years back never really materialised and this year there weren’t any November or December Admirals for me.
Two things I did notice this year was that of all the Red Admirals that I saw almost half were of the form ‘bialbata’ and some also had blue spotting in the second spot of the hind wing marginal band, something to look into a bit more this coming season.
17 Painted Lady, 03-05-2015 Bentley Wood
It wasn’t exactly a typical ‘Painted Lady Year’ never reaching the heady heights of a few years back when even Springwatch covered the mass invasion of the species. However that being said for me it was the best Painted Lady year since that time for several reasons.
First up they were a month earlier than my first of 2014 bucking the trend of a slow emergence due to the cool spring – although as they are a migrant species their ‘emergence’ probably wouldn’t follow the overall pattern of indigenous species. Secondly I saw them at a greater number of sites including Bentley Wood, Lulworth, Durlston, Studland, my Duke site, a couple of places on the west Wales coast, Laverstock and Larkhill. Finally it was the numbers in over half the sites that I saw them in there were pairs at least and at Durlston I saw over half way towards double figures. This reasonable year for Painted Ladies wasn’t echoed by that other migrant the Clouded Yellow and normally their invasion years coincide and yet despite seeing plenty of Painted Ladies I didn’t see a single Cloudy – perhaps next year will really be the ‘big one’?
18 Small Tortoiseshell, 07-03-2015, Five Rivers
Artificially the latest emerging species compared to last year; a whole three months and one week later than in 2014. However the key word here is ‘Artificially’ as this was only because my first last year was Bob on New Year’s Day. However in 2014 I made trips to Five Rivers and started seeing good numbers of Small Torts from the end of February whereas this year had to wait until well into March to start seeing them in similar numbers at my favourite early site. So they were definitely later coming out of hibernation. Once they made an appearance they had another good year and over the coming months they were easily the most commonly seen Aristocrat. In fact they were only outnumbered by Peacocks on one occasion at one Buddleia bush. However unlike previous years they didn’t hand around at the tail end of the season and seemed to finish up a lot more quickly than before although this was a trend that I noticed with most other species. So to sum up – later, good numbers (common) plenty of different sites and over quicker.
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19 Peacock, 05-04-2015, Llanachaeron
My first of 2015 was same day as my first Red Admiral and was just over a month later as with most early spring species. In fact it felt like a case of everything happening at once. I’d waited and waited and worked and worked Five Rivers, my ‘work route’ and various stop-offs on the way home to come up a paltry 4 species by April and then in one visit to Llanachaeron I picked 2-3 new species i the space of 30 minutes. Like the Small torts once the Peacocks had gotten started there seemed to be no holding them back and they were everywhere, yet always in slightly lower numbers than their cousins the Small Tort. In fact this trend seemed to continue throughout the year apart from a single trip to Studland where the Buddleia by the Discovery Centre had only 1 Small Tort and 3 Peacocks. It was heartening to see another ‘showy’ Aristocrat have a good year and I could sum up their year in a similar fashion to the Small Torts – later starting, good showing, quicker passing.
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20 Comma, 22-03-2015, Five Rivers
Tepid is how I could sum up the Comma year – neither one thing nor the other; not particularly good yet neither particularly bad. I think that at most sites they held similar numbers as last year but nothing really stood out Comma wise for me this year apart from the fact that whilst they emerged only 2 weeks later other hibernating Aristocrats seemed to be a month late and then the Commas also lasted if not as long perhaps longer as well.
Have a goodun
Wurzel