ernie f

[David M]

Fabulous, eclectic mix of images, ernie. I must say though that your fox wandering across such an exposed tract of terrain caught my attention more than anything else. I presume it was unaware of your presence?

[Janet Turnbull]

What a wonderful couple of days you had Ernie! I'm particularly impressed with the orchids, at least two of which I have never seen: the fly and musk orchids. And that fox!

[ernie f]

Thanks Janet and David. I think the fox was aware of me but he just didn't care. Here is the full sequence of pics...

Best Regards

[Goldie M]

Hi! ernie, I love the Fox photos I think we've got the Fly Orchid at Latterbarrow, I've not seen it but the Hillside there is full of Orchids , I don't know too much about Orchids but next time I go to Latterbarrow I'll certainly look out for it
My mind was fixed on looking for the NBA when I was there recently.
Your shot of it with the Digger Wasp is super Goldie

[ernie f]

Goldie - thanks. I loved the way the fox just looked at me, realised I wasn't a threat and just went about his business.
Hope you have luck with the Fly Orchids. The ones at Noar Hill are in the shadow of a copse of trees but do get some sun, the ones at Chappett's Copse are in woodland and the Burghclere Quarry ones are right out in the open sunshine for the most part, so you can never really be sure where to look for them.

[ernie f]

Wrecclesham - 11th June 2018

Wrecclesham before the bulldozers moved in (you don’t want to see it now!).

My thanks to Pauline (and ultimately Hazel) for drawing my attention to the fact that the Wrecclesham Glanvilles were out and about.

I tried my luck this evening while it was still sunny and warm and came up trumps with at least two of them. Here are a few pics. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but I think this and the next pic is of a male – very orange …..

… and this is a female perhaps? Darker looking, a bit more on the yellower side of orange – fatter body.

And I haven’t a clue about this next one – possibly male again?

Non-butterfly snapshot of the day

When the pond was still there its edges were crammed with bulrushes.

[Andrew555]

Great Glanvilles Ernie, and recent selections. I especially like your Painted Lady and SSB's.

[ernie f]

Thanks Andrew. I was lucky with the PL. I'm glad you like the SSB's cos there's a lot more of them to come.

[Katrina]

Just catching up , love the fox photos - beautiful colours!

[ernie f]

Greywell Common and Conford Common - 13th June 2018

Today I spent mopping up a couple of orchids you can't see at Noar Hill!

First at Greywell Common, the Southern Marsh Orchid. This first pic is of one alongside its main pollinator - the Large Skipper.

But its not the only one. This fly is giving it a go.

A couple of years ago this new variety was discovered but I have not seen it since.

Then at Conford Common, the Heath Spotted Orchid. Conford Common at one time had over 1000 of them but it is not a managed site and numbers have plummeted over the years due to being overtaken by bracken. However I did manage to find 47 of them in about 30 minutes of trying.

[Wurzel]

Great to see the Glannies still at Wrecclesham, hopefully they can hang on in there, fingers crossed I've been enjoying there various Orchids you've posted about - is there a distribution map for the various UK species available somewhere?

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[ernie f]

Thanks, Katrina. Yes a Red Fox in a Red field.

Wurzel: My primary orchid book is the WILDguides series title "Britain's Orchids" by David Lang published by English Nature. It has distribution maps for all Britain's Orchids. I have not bothered to look on the internet for them because of this. Also you may have seen the recent posting of Burnt Orchid. Did you know you have recently visited a reserve near you that has them? Martin Down! This species has two flowering periods but I don't know which one happens at Martin Down (or indeed if it may have both).

Cheers

[Wurzel]

Cheers Ernie, I'll do a bit of internet searching to see if I can come up with anything I saw the Burnt-tip Orchids at Martin Down (to feature in a later post) and there were Frog and Butterfly Orchids here a few years back. I'd like to add a few more photos to my Orchid folder

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[ernie f]

This morning is pretty bleak here in Hampshire so I thought I’d post more on my study of the “Broxhead Blues”.

Territories (or the lack of them)

The Broxhead location just the other side of the metal bar gate appears to be a lekking area for the Silver-studded Blues. I have seen dozens of males strutting their stuff here. The full gamut of behaviours from nectaring and basking to positioning between males and courting and mating with females, females laying eggs and emerging adults.

They rarely fly more than about 20 metres from where they emerge and never fly high, always hugging the ground and low heather. The main lek at Broxhead is longer than 20 metres and I have not seen a standard species individual on one side of the lek travel to the other side and I once spent 30 minutes with one to see where he went and he did stay only at one end. One reference I have read suggests that a few individuals do travel and it is these that are often responsible for the small satellite communities that pop up around the main lek sites and it keeps the genetic pool mixed. Officially recorded travel distances have sometimes been clocked at up to 1.5 km with at least one max distance at 4 km.

It seems the males in the lek have no preferred daytime perch but constantly flit about the heather searching for unmated females, stopping on occasion to bask in the sun or to nectar from a heather bloom. Each male does not appear to have its own territory but instead shares the lek with all the other males. They do not so much “joust” as for example Small Coppers or Duke of Burgundy's in a lek do, but they “jostle” instead. They are in fact remarkably tolerant of each other. I have seen 6 males all together in a small patch no larger than 1 square metre all getting along fine. I have seen three roosting together on the same heather bush no more than a foot away from each other. I saw two sitting on the same leaf for awhile without any noticeable forms of intimidation between them and as you can see from the photo their wings were almost touching.

On another occasion one male came across another perched motionless on a heather branch but he just flew off without any interaction. The one on the heather didn't even flinch. Of course, just when you believe you have found a rule of thumb, the butterfly breaks it. The above observations were during the height of the 2017 flight-period. In the first few days of the flight period of 2018, there were only four males along the heathery bank beside the lek and two of them were performing a standard sparring match – just like normal territory protection. So it seems their behaviour changes dependent upon population density! Because territories are loose where this buttterfly is more tightly packed, there is less need to fight and if it is clear two males both only intend to sunbathe then all is OK between them. The longest I have seen two males tousle without a female present in a full lek is about 5 seconds. More usually it only lasts 1 second or even less. However, the full joust in an almost empy lek I saw this year lasted for about 10 seconds.

When another butterfly species enters the lek a male Silver-studded Blue can get a bit shirty with it. I saw one male Silver-studded Blue chase off a Small Heath Butterfly. He pursued it with some vigour, following and parrying its every dip and swoop until he was sure it would not return. Then he nonchalantly went back to the lek. I have seen the same kind of chase between a Silver-studded Blue and a Common Heath Moth and also with a Large Skipper. Another male displayed even more bravado and chased off a Common Blue Damselfly! The only times I see males properly fight is when competing over a female. In one instance a female flew about 20 metres in fast direct flight with two males chasing her and fighting each other all the way. I had to run to follow them. Finally the three of them whirled around each other for about two minutes then the female flew off without the two males (and me) realising it at first. The males continued to fight each other sporadically for another couple of minutes. In the gaps between bouts, one searched for the lost female and the other landed and fluttered its wings, presumably in a courtship display. He still hadn't realised the female had gone.

Courtship and Rejection

Which males get the females seems to be dependent solely on which males come out best from courtship. Courtship can include a kind of dance in flight, low to the ground. I have seen a male flutter up and down while circling a female for example. On occasion a male and female might settle next to each other. The male might flutter his wings while he perches on the ground and the female stays still and watches.

If he gets close enough he might approach her face-to-face and touch her. He may even rest in close proximity facing away from her and will flap his wings open a few times in her direction hoping to grab her attention with the vibrant blue and black markings of the upper side of his wings (or maybe to waft scent at her?). However, if a perched female is not interested, she may vibrate her wings very fast or just give them a quick flick. If she is already in flight she will simply fly off and the male may pursue but he usually gets the message in the end. It always surprises me how often a female rejects a male but if there are ten times as many males in the lek as females which is about the ratio early in the flight period then I suppose she can afford to be choosy! As the flight period progresses more females emerge and you see more mating going on, but of course that just means there are more gravid females flying around to reject males! Once mated they don't mate again. There was one time when two males were trying to mate with a tiny, micro-sized female that had wings clearly half the size of a normal female but after repeatedly trying and failing they both gave up. Although she was trying to fend them off by doing the wing-flapping routine and she was able to fly, she preferred instead to walk down heather stalks and try and hide away from them. This is the action of an egg-laying female, so whilst she was petite she had still been able to mate successfully I would guess.

It appears males randomly flit around looking for females by sight, but they can only see no more than between one and two feet away from them (which is my experience to date) so the jostling by males in a lek may be more to do with searching for a female and then finding when they get close and seeing its a male instead, having to swerve off at the last minute. I saw just this happen when a male got close to a mating pair. He saw the female I imagine and only when he landed by her did he seem to realise she was already doing the business with another male! He did not hang around for long. However on occasion, especially when the lek is full to bursting with males, you can find times when a number of males fight over a female even if she is already mating. In these instances the mating male will flutter his wings and try to arrange for his open wings to be between the female and the unwanted additional suitor but its often a futile gesture if a bunch of males get in on the act from all directions. The picture below shows a mating pair on the right with the male's wings open to fend off the intruder on the left.

I have never seen an intruder win in such a battle – the mating male always succeeds in fending off the other males once he has connected with a female.

If not mating, sometimes when there are a lot of males around, a female will run the gauntlet of male attention and in these instances if she is not willing, a male may persist for some time. They will dance around her, flapping their wings, close in and get right “in her face” and sometimes even grip onto her and maybe even walk over her back. She will even go to the lengths of kicking him away with her front legs (video still picture below shows this). You may need to click on it to enlarge it.

He will use his front pair of legs to try and hold onto her or to beat away other interested males. However despite all these desperate bids to mate, no male I have seen has succeeded in mating with an unwilling female!

It is commonly mentioned in the books that all the male butterflies of the Lycaenidae family, and the Silver-studded Blue is one of these, do not “use” their front pair of legs by which it is usually meant they do not use them to walk on or stand on but now I find they can use them to grip onto a female or to fend off other male suitors when they are trying to mate with a female. They are certainly not vestigial or redundant - they are simply specialised. They are used more like arms than legs so it seems to me.

Although the pair in this picture below might seem to be courting face-to-face, in actual fact this is a male bothering a gravid female. He just would not leave her alone for at least 30 minutes and she kept backing away from him all this time. It appears she had no effective rejection strategy and was not willing to fly off or even walk away, presumably because she was at her chosen egg-laying site (they were in the centre of the lek). She did not once vibrate her wings or try and fight him off while I was watching them. Perhaps she had done this earlier but the male persisted anyway so she stopped to conserve energy. This is exceptional behaviour on the part of the male that I have never witnessed again.

Some females I have seen seem to like to rest on the fringes of the lek. Often when they do this they tuck their hind-wings behind their forewings to show the minimum profile, almost as if hiding away for a spot of “me” time. Given their diminutive size, brown colour and tendency to hide like this, any count of females at a lek site will always be under-estimated. This low-profile is the normal roosting position for both males and females of this species of course. Not only does it protect them from airborne predators and reduce buffeting by wind but it also conceals females from ardent males to some extent.

Well that's it for another Broxhead Blues instalment.

[Maximus]

Hi Ernie,

I remember Wrecclesham before the bulldozers moved in But it's nice to see that the Glanvilles are still going.

Mike

[Janet Turnbull]

A fascinating account, Ernie - I wish I'd seen that before my encounter with the SSBs yesterday, I'd have watched them differently!

[ernie f]

Mike - Yes its great they are still there. I went to Hutchinson's Bank in Surrey (which is actually a bit of a trek for me) twice last year but could not find any there, so its nice to have some virtually on my doorstep.

Janet - Thank you for your kind words about my account and we should both thank the SSB's for being so fascinating.

[ernie f]

Broxhead - 15th June 2018

A quick update on how the Broxhead Blues are getting on. I have been doing almost daily surveys of the lek and its surrounding area and on occasion a quick survey of the local satellite communities of SSB's. Note this is only a small portion of the entire reserve.

The long anticipated "eruption" has occurred!

Today there were 169 in and around the lek with a further 38 in the immediately adjacent satellite communities. I am now seeing all the usual behaviours in a brimming lek. Males jostling with each other, egg-laying females, mating, females rejecting males by buzzing them with their wings, roosting, groups of males fighting for a female, etc. There are places where you can just stand and watch clouds of them flit around your feet completely oblivious to your presence.

[Wurzel]

Interesting post on their courtship behaviour Ernie, something to look out for when I eventually get round to making a visit to my Silver-stud site

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[ernie f]

Wurzel - Yes its great to watch them when they get to this stage. Its like watching a butterfly soap-opera unfold.