Cheers, David - I'm sorry things have ground to a halt over your way.
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_sad.gif)
My own experience locally is that Brown Argus have done really well this year, with high numbers in both broods so far and new examples still appearing. On some days they have outnumbered the Common Blues.
Cheers, Wurzel - the SSSkippers have been around for five or six weeks now up at Aston Rowant, and as you noticed, there are still one or two fresh females. These attractive ladies are naturally subject to much attention from the remaining rather scruffy males, but mostly they shrug it off as they are egg-laying (having already mated).
Thank you Goldie - they certainly are (and I hear reports of good numbers from Kent as well).
Wednesday 22nd August. The weather promised for today was increasing sunshine and warmth, if not heat, by the end of the afternoon. I picked up Bugboy from Dorking Station and we headed down towards Steyning on a Brown Hairstreak hunt. Still wall-to-wall cloud on arrival and with no sign of a change we made for nearby Mill Hill where there was a good chance the less-picky butterflies would be responding to the brightness and the degree of warmth that came with it.
Initially, we found a number of resting Adonis.
It would have been interesting to have had a lightmeter to hand - at a certain level of brightness, the green slopes were suddenly dotted with brilliant blue dots as the male Adonis Blues opened up in response. To be fair, many were a lttle worn, but there were plenty of relatively new individuals as well.
In some ways the worn ones can be more eye-catching, as they take on a deeper, more electric blue shade with hints of violet and indigo as well as turquoise and royal blue. This must be down to how the scales wear and change with age, as I believe all the colour is down to refraction/diffraction of light, rather than any actual pigmentation.
The conditions were ideal for photography, as the butterflies opened up, were fairly calm and moved around only very slightly. Much harder to spot were the females, but I tracked a few down.
Also seen were a number of Meadow Browns, some of the females being pretty fresh.
In amongst them I spotted a weird assymetrically bleached individual, a male. Examples of this in this species are not unusual, but the degree to which this had happened here certainly was.
One or two Chalkhills remained, all quite worn now.
There were also a few Common Blues and Small Heaths in amongst the Adonis, but I didn't come across any Brown Argus or Small Coppers.
On the non-butterfly side, I found a mint moth sharing a flower with a beautiful hoverfly of a type I had not seen before.
There was also this attractive moth...
...and finally this large male cricket.
There were more Adonis to come, as in the absence still of any actual sunshine, Bugboy and I moved down the road to Anchor Bottom.
Dave