Morning Otep - thank you for your kind comment. You obviously have thought of many elements that might affect the timing of this process
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. I can tell you for sure that it varies with species. This Orange tip took about 20 seconds to emerge and 3-4 minutes to inflate her wings. It was getting on for about an hour before she took flight although I didn't time it as I was preparing my parrot for the vet. I have known some Hairstreaks fly in about 15 mins and can recall that the Dark Green Fritillary emerged particularly fast - I remember likening it to someone kicking down a door at the time. Some species can be much slower making photography much easier. One thing I have noticed is how much the time can vary within species between forming the pupa and emerging and I am referring to caterpillars that are kept in identical conditions. Any idea why that should be? Perhaps one larva eats more than the other and develops quicker? Difference between genders??
I'm very pleased you think so David as a strong breeze was making photography difficult. Thank you.
Hi Mike, how's Cathy? Good to hear from you. Don't get me started re NH. You might recall last year I met with the management and wrote several times. I wasn't the only one. In successive years mistakes have been made repeatedly (mostly in the timing of work carried out but also in burning BH eggs, destroying young blackthorn, scraping areas where pupa were likely to be and using herbicide sprays). As you might imagine this has decimated the Brown Hairstreak population there but with no measures in place (not even an egg count) this is hard to quantify. I usually have no difficulty locating eggs but could only find 4 yesterday, all of which had hatched:
Really Mike, there are better places to be these days than NH
Cheers Wurzel - watching it really is great. Waiting for it to happen, really isn't!
Hi Sarah - thank you for your kind comment. I think it is an even bigger privilege to have had these eggs laid in the garden to begin with. A quick look round yesterday found 5 Brimstone eggs on the Alder Buckthorn
Thanks Goldie - you'll succeed soon, I'm sure! If the weather picks up, that is!!!
Whilst in the garden recently I saw a spider that seemed mostly green. I have tried to identify this but the closest I can get is Green hunting spider. Any ideas?