female Common blue?

Dave 2 · Post by **Dave 2** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 12:40 pm

On my patch I see hundreds of common blues, but hardly ever see the females. Is this common in other areas too?

Could this be a female Common blue? I took the shot yesterday and have only just looked at it.

My guess is that it could be one of the females that have brown wing tips going into blue as it gets closer to the body area.

Any ideas.

Thanks Dave

Wayne · Post by **Wayne** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 1:18 pm

She's a she in my opinion, the male's body is all blue fur, whereas hers has a lot of brown fur.

The bits of the inside wing that you can see look brown.

The Orange spots are rather large, another sign of female.

The Females are usually smaller in the Common Blues, quite noticably smaller in my experience.

Anyhoo, just my opinion

I'm no expert by a long way.

Dave 2 · Post by **Dave 2** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:16 am

Thanks Wayne for the confirmation.

Dave

eccles · Post by **eccles** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 7:47 pm

And if you look closely there's a trace of a white roundel on the forewing inside the other two lines of spots. If she had pushed her forewings a little further foreward you'd see the black dot that a brown argus doesn't have.

Dave 2 · Post by **Dave 2** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:19 am

Yep, I see it.
Thanks eccles.