Possible Brown Hairstreak egg on leaf?

[661-Pete]

Hello,
On a short walk today around our local Brown Hairstreak site, looking out for egg-laying females, but didn't see any. Perhaps it was too hot (over 27C !) and they all chose to stay in the treetops. But we did discover what looked very much like a BH egg on the blackthorn, but it was laid on a leaf rather than on the twig. In that position it's unlikely to survive, surely?

I'm no expert, but it was the right size, we had a lens and I could see the characteristic 'sea urchin' pattern. And it was definitely on blackthorn. Could it have been something else?

I've marked the spot as best I could. I could go back there and 'rescue' it - but I'd then have no idea what to do next. Advice please?

[Chris Jackson]

Hi Pete,
It would be good if you could first get a photo of it so that the experts can confirm what it is.
Chris

[661-Pete]

Difficult for me, I'm not really into macro photography and I don't have a decent macro lens, so the best I can do is this rather feeble effort:

cropped:

Egg 02.jpg (42.17 KiB) Viewed 1342 times

and an attempt at sharpening:

Egg 03.jpg (53.99 KiB) Viewed 1342 times

For the purpose of scaling, the leaf was about 15mm wide at its widest. That makes the egg a bit over 0.5 mm across.