CallumMac

[CallumMac]

17/05/2018 - Walmgate Stray lunchbreak

Well, I did it! After getting nothing but positive reviews on here, from colleagues at work and online for the 105mm macro focal length, I bought Sigma's version on Wednesday. I took it out for its first spin on the Stray this lunchtime.

Predictably, my first butterfly photo with the lens was... unorthodox!

I actually quite like it. "The ghost of Speckled Wood flown"...

It was cloudy and windy, so there was not much to chase butterfly-wise. I followed that first Speckled Wood for a bit, and then found another that was less worn (but only slightly!).

I've been searching an area of the Stray this week that is rich in Common Mouse-ear, the foodplant of the Small Yellow Underwing moth. Peter Mayhew recorded the moth in good numbers on Monday but I'm yet to find any - it's been too cool for the last couple of days. However, my search today revealed something just as interesting - these two Glyphipterix simpliciella sharing a buttercup. They were both coated in pollen. I think we are often guilty of underestimating the potential contribution of moths to pollination.

[CallumMac]

18/05/2018 - another Walmgate Stray lunchbreak

A nicer day than the 17th, so I was a bit more hopeful about what I might find. Sure enough, there was plenty of life on the Stray.

This Small Tortoiseshell was something of a surprise, as it's been at least a couple of weeks since I last saw one. For a butterfly that must be 8 months old or more, it was in remarkably good condition!

I then watched this male Orange-tip for a while. He was moving exclusively from cuckooflower to cuckooflower, steadfastly ignoring all other possible nectar sources. As there were only about 4 cuckooflower plants in that part of the Stray, it made it very easy to predict where he'd go next and set up the shots I wanted!

Having found the Glyphipterix simpliciella yesterday on just a single flower, I was interested to see if I could locate them anywhere else on the Stray now the sun was out. As it turned out, they were on almost every buttercup I checked - a very healthy population!

Finally, I managed to connect with the Small Yellow Underwings, having got some more detailed information from Peter on where to find them. These really are delightful little moths, and make our smallest butterfly look like Cupido maximus!

If all goes to plan today (19th), then by the time most of you read this post I will have seen my first ever Duke of Burgundy...

[bugboy]

Good luck with the Dukes. If you're in the right place you shouldn't have any trouble finding them, they're not the most shy species out there!

[millerd]

Your Yorkshire Tortoiseshells are a lot better preserved than the soft southern ones round here, Callum. I shall be very interested in your Duke findings too, if they are from that part of the world...

Dave

[CallumMac]

If you're in the right place you shouldn't have any trouble finding them

Thanks both. I must have been in the right place...

20/05/2018 - Hawnby Hill (North York Moors)

Oh, boy. Honestly, this was one of the most mind-blowing experiences of my butterfly-chasing life. I spent yesterday morning with some colleagues from work and the Yorkshire Mammal Group, checking Longworth traps around the university campus, so it was lunchtime before I set off for the North York Moors with Andy Suggitt and Charles Cunningham, and around 2 before we arrived at Hawnby Hill near Helmsley. Walking out from the carpark, we immediately started to see Latticed Heath moths...

...and very soon after, found a decent colony of Green Hairstreaks in the lee of a stand of conifers.

We carried on round the Hill, following the contours and seeing more moths and a snipe en route. After a short while we reached the dry-stone wall that marks the edge of the Duke of Burgundy's favoured haunt. I will admit that I was a ball of nervous energy - after seeing all of your amazing pictures of this species down south, would they be flying? Would we see one? Would it live up to the expectation?

...yes, yes and yes! Within less than a minute, Andy shouted "I've got one!". I rushed up the slope to him, and sure enough, there she was - my first Duchess. Every bit as dainty, delicate and perfectly formed as I had been led to believe she would be.

We moved further into the site and met several others with cameras, who relayed that their estimate was ~35 individuals on the wing. This sounded high at first but over the course of the afternoon it became clear that it might have even been conservative! The population here is really strong. At one point I followed a pair of battling males as they were joined by another - and another - and more, until there was a little melee of 7 barreling along! I think I saw a few drop out and be replaced during this process, so my estimate was that there were 10 males along a section of footpath about 5 metres long. Just jaw-dropping.

Obviously, I took hundreds of photos. I hope you don't mind me sharing quite a few here, as this will probably be my one and only encounter with this species in 2018!

Having spent around an hour in the company of the Dukes, we agreed to carry on around the Hill and to walk back over the top to get the views. As we climbed the hill, we briefly encountered a few, quite fresh, Dingy Skippers. I hope to have some better photos of this species to show this evening, as I'll be spending the afternoon at Kiplingcotes, but for now:

As we passed over the summit of the Hill, we were very surprised to see, first, a Red Admiral, shortly followed by what we were almost certain were two Painted Ladies. All three bombed through too quickly for photographs. Having not heard many reports of migrants from down south yet, we weren't really expecting an influx so far north - will these turn out to be the first 2018 records of these two species for North Yorkshire? Quite possibly, but time will tell.

Descending back to the car park, we decided to spend a final few minutes in the company of the Green Hairstreaks. Surprisingly, although there were considerable numbers of GH by the wood next to the car park, we barely saw any elsewhere on the Hill, despite the general flora of bilberry and heather being the same all over. I noticed that most (but not all) individuals had a clear line of white markings on the underwings. I'm sure I've seen this discussed in the last few weeks in somebody's PD, but I can't remember the significance - can anybody enlighten me?

A fantastic day of butterflies, enough to slightly reduce the jealousy built up over the last few weeks of browsing all your PDs! As a final book-end to the day, I spent sunset in a hide on the Lower Derwent Valley NNR listening to corncrakes calling. Now, there's a reintroduced population in East Anglia but a truly natural English corncrake? That's something you have to be in East Yorkshire to experience!

P.S. whilst sat in the front room writing this post, I have on three occasions spotted a female Holly Blue in the front garden over the road testing their bushes for egg-laying. Each time I've sprinted out the front door, camera in hand, and finally on the third managed to get some photos, which I'll include in today's PD. The neighbours must think I'm crazy!

[bugboy]

Well done with the northern Dukes. Your excitement sounds very similar to how I felt a few years ago when I saw my very first, also a Duchess

[Andrew555]

Looks and sounds like a fantastic day Callum, great stuff.

[CallumMac]

Thanks. It's looking forward to days like those that makes the long winter months bearable!

As promised, here is the Holly Blue from lunchtime today.

20/05/2018 - Kiplingcotes Chalk Pit

After the excitement of yesterday, I decided to just have a relaxing afternoon today at Kiplingcotes. It's a lovely reserve but way off the beaten track and, to be fair, probably holds little interest except to botanists and lepidopterists. As a consequence, it's always really peaceful there. I have a favourite spot to sit and decompress, at the top of the bank above the pit, and as usual I headed there first to sit and enjoy the sun.

Today the Pit was absolutely chock-full of Dingy Skippers (Chocolate Skippers? Best I can come up with so far...). They were mostly supercharged and quite unapproachable. I spent a happy couple of hours following them and trying my best to get the photos I wanted!

Apart from the Chocolates, there was not much else about, but I did come across my first Small Heath of the year.

[millerd]

It's great to see the Dukes of Yorkshire clearly thriving up there miles from their southern strongholds. It's also good to see strong populations of Dingy Skippers in both locations. I think I've missed my chance to come up for a peek this year, but who knows? Do you still have Pearl-bordered Fritillaries in Yorkshire too?

Dave

[Goldie M]

Hi! Callum, will please chase some of those Dukes over the Pennines to Lancashire Only one or two at a time being seen at Gait Barrow in the Lake's, Lovely shots of them, have you any Pearls you can chase over as well Goldie

[CallumMac]

Thanks Dave, Goldie. I don't know if they are thriving exactly - there are only a few sites, and I believe Hawnby is by some distance the strongest, and some attempts to generate new colonies through translocation to increase the metapopulation size have not all been successful. That said, I think their persistence owes an awful lot to the hard work of Butterfly Conservation in this region. The same is true for the PBFs as well (yes, we do still have them): as far as I'm aware there are about 3 remaining colonies, the locations of which are a very closely-guarded secret that quite a few people nonetheless seem to know...

As for the Dingies, they certainly seem to be doing just fine up here. Since a large chunk of the dry chalk valleys of the Wolds became open access land, it's become clear that there are loads of colonies that weren't previously known - a lot of those found, I think, by Sean Clough (CBR for East Yorks). Certainly the colony at Kiplingcotes seems to be pretty strong. I can't help but look around that site and imagine it full of all the southern chalk downland species, though, especially Small Blue. The conditions are about right and most of the foodplants are present. Wishful thinking, perhaps!

[CallumMac]

22/5/2018 - Walmgate Stray

Just a quick update from me this evening. A busy couple of days at work means I missed my usual lunchbreak butterflying, and expect to miss it again tomorrow. We have colleagues visiting from Liverpool and Bristol for a big meeting, so instead I took one of them out to the Stray at the end of the day to show them the Small Yellow Underwings. The moths were performing well but the undoubted star of the show was my first 2018 Small Copper.

Absolutely my favourite British butterfly, and seeing it always makes my day!

[Goldie M]

Hi! Callum, Your doing better in Yorkshire it seems than we are, I've yet to see a Small Copper here yet, i really like the small Butterflies best, Holly Blues, Hair Streaks, Coppers their all so delicate , you even get the lovely Marbled White there, I think it's too wet this side of the Pennines, every time I see the weather map the rain always seems to be heading West for us Goldie

[CallumMac]

Things have certainly started to catch up after a very late start, Goldie! As you suggest, I suspect that we are slightly warmer and drier with more hours of sunshine over here.

[millerd]

As for the Dingies, they certainly seem to be doing just fine up here. Since a large chunk of the dry chalk valleys of the Wolds became open access land, it's become clear that there are loads of colonies that weren't previously known - a lot of those found, I think, by Sean Clough (CBR for East Yorks). Certainly the colony at Kiplingcotes seems to be pretty strong. I can't help but look around that site and imagine it full of all the southern chalk downland species, though, especially Small Blue. The conditions are about right and most of the foodplants are present. Wishful thinking, perhaps!

Small Blues aren't a particularly "southern" species - I believe they are found in Scotland right up to and including the northern coast along from Cape Wrath. If there is kidney vetch, then Small Blues should be quite happy - but they have to find their way from another colony of course. For Chalkhills, you need horseshoe vetch, and I don't know if that thrives up there. I suppose gradual warming of the climate might allow this to happen, but a natural spread north of Chalkhills might take many years, and I don't think the chalk downland habitat is sufficiently continuous either. Nice thought, though!

Cheers,

Dave

[CallumMac]

Of course you're quite right, Dave - the existence of (very) northern colonies of Small Blue suggesting that there's no climatic barrier to their survival this far north. In fact believe there's already been an unlicensed release of this species at a site somewhere in North Yorks a few years ago, so I am clearly not the only person thinking these thoughts! There are occasional records of Horseshoe Vetch up here but it's not established as far as I know. I imagine that both the hostplant and the butterflies would need a helping hand to reach the Wolds - though as the climate warms I think the possibility of them thriving there gets more realistic! A man can dream...

[CallumMac]

24/05/2018 - North York Moors

With butterfly season now in full swing and the weather forecast set fair, I decided to cash in one of my days of annual leave today. It turned out to be a great decision!

The brother of a friend is involved with monitoring some of the more fragile Duke of Burgundy sites on the edge of the North York Moors, and they very kindly invited me to help them with today's surveys. I met them around coffee time, and we started by exploring a new area a couple of kilometres from the known sites. No luck with butterflies here, but a remarkable close encounter with a Tawny Owl was reward enough.

We moved on to the known Duke sites. On the track in we noticed the large number of healthy elm trees and speculated as to whether the wood might contain White-letter Hairstreak. On parking up, we started checking some feeding damage on elms, and remarkably we were able to locate a late-instar larva almost immediately, and within just two metres of the car. It's incredible what can be found when you take the time to look closely!

We managed to locate small numbers of Dukes in both of the main areas, and also saw at least one individual some distance away from these sites in an area coppiced with the express intention of allowing the species to expand into new parts of the site. Numbers here are nothing like as strong as at Hawnby Hill, but the signs today were encouraging, and it appears that the management work done has had a positive effect.

Having completed our surveys, the afternoon was still young, so we decided to pay a visit to the main colony of Pearl-bordered Fritillary in Yorkshire. There were plenty of individuals on the wing, and with females moving among the piles of dead bracken seeking out violets and laying eggs, photo opportunities weren't too hard to come by!

On a couple of occasions, we saw females rejecting the unwelcome attentions of inquisitive males. They have an interesting dance-like response, raising their wings and flapping aggressively. I tried to capture it but it happened too quickly!

Another wonderful day, and very glad to have caught the Pearls. With the next two days forecast to be pretty miserable, I wonder whether today might have been my last chance this year!

[David M]

Definitely a day to remember, Callum, and well worth cashing in that day's annual leave.

I also never knew PBFs were present in Yorkshire so you learn something every day!

[millerd]

It's great to see those two particular butterflies thriving in their Yorkshire niches, Callum. And another example (if one were needed) that White-letter Hairstreaks are found wherever Elms still grow - brilliant!

Dave

[CallumMac]

It's certainly nice to have relatively accessible populations of both - saves me from the moral dilemma of whether to drive all the way down south to see rare and beautiful butterflies! Chambers Farm Wood in Lincolnshire is similarly a good resource - thinking of going there tomorrow.

No butterflying today as the weather is overcast and windy. I thought I'd share a couple from this morning's moth-trap instead!

This Pale Tussock came to rest on the wall above the trap. I'd love to know whether it chose its position deliberately, as it was almost perfectly camouflaged on the mortar!

By contrast, this Lime-speck Pug was extremely visible.

Finally, the Spectacle is a really smart moth, but this one was a little shy, and only showed half of its flying-goggle pattern.