Week 2 Chalkhill Blue – Favourite Photo 2022
Well that week shot by and here we are ready to start round/week 2 of the Favourites thread!
Please could I ask that everyone waits until a topic has been opened by me for a particular species before posting photos as then it will be easier to keep track of things? Of course our overseas members are very welcome to fill in the obvious gaps relating to rare UK migrants. As in previous years details of locations, dates, times and circumstances would be welcome as would any accompanying stories and anecdotes or other observations of behaviour and interesting other points.
Here we go, again!
Have a goodun
Wurzel
P.S. Just another reminder that you might want to select your Favourite first so you can save it for the grand finale in 20 weeks time…
After a fantastic trip to Alners Gorse with Philzoid back at the end of July (three species of Hairstreak, Valesina, White Admiral, Silver-washed, aberrant Small Copper etc. etc.) we stopped in at Martin Down on the way home just because it was slightly early and so there was time that needed filling. As we wandered down the main track, it having opened out from the tall hedges that line the car park, a few Chalkhills made us tarry on our way to the Big Butt. This particular butterfly was the second of the pairing and a ‘time filler’ this ain’t hence its choice as my favourite. It was fresh out of the box with not a mark on it, a nick in the fringes or a scale out of place and better still there are a few orange spots on the hind wings. These and the extended black markings themselves made it really stand out from the other Chalkhills that I’d seen both before and subsequently and when I was choosing my fave for this species I kept coming back to this one.
My attempts to photograph Chalkhill Blue this year we’re thwarted by strong winds, even early in the morning. On one particularly windy morning, I checked out a small sheltered gully away from my usual site and found this immaculate male basking in the first rays of the day.
Chalk Hill Blue is a species that is generally not found in the midlands although there have been some sightings in the far south of Warwickshire in recent years. As a rule, if I want to see this species I have to travel for it or if I am lucky will find it flying during one of our longer trips when we stay in a B&B somewhere.
In the past couple of years with our daughter now living in Emsworth, this has given me the opportunity to pop up to Old Winchester Hill where I find them flying in good numbers albeit generally well past their best by the time of our visits in late August or early September.
This year I payed a visit on August 29th when, along with loads of well worn examples of both sexes I was chuffed to find one individual that looked to have emerged very recently, either the day before or maybe earlier that day.
millerd wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 6:55 pmThere is no lengthy musing and choosing needed for me this year - one particular Chalkhill Blue rather stands out in the memory...
Utterly understood, Dave. That is a once-in-a-lifetime sighting.
I saw my first Chalkhill Blue of the year at Temple Ewell on the 10th of August, I'm always pleased to see them, there's always a good number there and when they find dog poo they arrive in clusters Goldie
Like Goldie ,i found many Chalkhills flying at Lydden/Temple near Dover .Some beauties opening up when the sun finally appeared, after a dull start . I start out pretty early ,so that at least i can look through the undersides for anything a bit different .Amongst the roosting individuals i found this one ,these shots show the difference in both wings .
Abberations of this type are pretty frequent at Lydden ,and i generally find a few most seasons.
This male caught the attention as it tried to make the best of a little brightness in cloudy conditions on the North Downs. Closer examination revealed some orange markings at the apex of the central hindwing markings. This seems to be described in some places as ab. lunuco.
On the same visit, I found this female - a bit scruffier than some of those photographed this year, but interesting for the rather extensive blue suffusion. Not exactly f. syngrapha, but maybe a few aspirations in that direction.
The most surprising sighting of the year, however, was this male. It was flying in a meadow at a small nature reserve in Surrey, just outside the SW London boundary - so far away from the chalk and any Chalkhill Blue colonies. No foodplant or other records there, so presumably one of the occasional individuals which goes on a long wander.
Some lovely individuals there "Over the pass" .Like yourself i found a male Chalkhill miles from "home" in my local woodlands a few years back .........about 8-9 miles from their closest downland site .
And thats a cracking abberant male with the reddest spots that i,ve seen on a Chalkhill ,i think if i,d have found it .i.d mark it as AB;Suavis .
Allan.W.
I suspect you may very well be right that this individual would be correctly described as ab. suavis.
Never having come across this feature before, my attempt to give it a label came from looking at the British Butterflies Aberrations website, where the Chalkhill Blue page has a rather exhaustingly exhaustive set of examples of perceived aberrations. (Some of which look to me to fall within the normal range of variation in this species.)
I settled on ab. lunuco simply because the example there looked most like the one in my photo – with quite marked orange spots but no other obvious remarkable features. I did also note ab. suavis, but the example there looked rather different from mine – as well as having a couple of (rather faint) orange spots on each hind wing, the ground colour on the forewings seems notably more pale/ silvery than usual, and there are quite marked pale rings around the black marginal spots, especially on the hindwings. So I thought maybe it was one or more of those other features which corresponded to the ab. suavis characterisation.
However, I see that the same page also offers an ab. unisuavis (with one orange spot on each hindwing) and an ab. trisuavis (with three). I guess this does rather point to the orange spots as the relevant characteristic for a “suavis”-type label. Not sure what the other distinguishing feature of the ab. lunuco example might be, although I do note it has a very small discoidal spot on each forewing. If that is the (rather subtle) distinguishing feature, maybe this example might usefully have been labelled ab. lunuco + ab. suavis.
Whatever the label, it’s interesting to wonder where those orange spots come from. They don’t look like the kind of variation which one might expect from unusual environmental conditions during the pre-adult stages, so I guess they may be down to a small genetic variation. There was another butterfly which I photographed close by the first one which had similar, although less strong, orange spots. Suppose this may well have been a sibling of the first one. I know next to nothing about genetics, but I wonder whether the “orange spot” variant might be down to a relatively uncommon recessive gene, so that you need two copies of the variant for that gene to be expressed – ie you’d need both the male and the female from the pairing which produced these individuals to have that variant, and that would be a relatively rare event.
Anyhow, it was a nice surprise on what had looked like an unpromising afternoon.
I've always found ab. suavis individuals to be a regular occurrence at Denbies Hillside.
20th July 2023
The numbers at this site are often in the hundreds, and the variety is amazing - it is very difficult to see which of these are just within normal variation and which deserve to be called aberrations. You can see how the Victorians amassed vast collections full of subtle differences.
You've obviously been more observant over the years than have I, Dave, but I guess what you say corroborates the supposition that there's a bit of whatever variant produces this in the gene pool there. And yes, the range of variation in the black marginal markings etc which you encounter as a matter of course is considerable, which is why I think of that just as "typical" variation, rather than aberration, though I guess it's all a bit subjective. Many of the differences we see in the wing patterns between individual butterflies, which interest us for novelty/ attractiveness, probably don't matter much in terms of their survival and reproduction. (Although in the days of collectors, looking noticeably different was probably a bad idea in that context.) Whereas there must be all kinds of other variations which do matter but which are completely invisible to us as casual observers.
Many years ago a whole volume of Chalkhill Vaiations/abberations was produced "A Monograph of the Abberations of the Chalkhill Blue " by Bright and Leeds .................a volume i,d dearly like to have a look through ,i,ve only ever seen one for sale ..........and that was VERY pricey ................I wonder if Bugboys got a copy in his collection ?
One of my favourite book chapters is called " collecting the Blues " from "living with Butterflies " by L.H.Newman although the practice is thankfully frowned upon today ,i find it a very evocative of that time ...............Thankfully ,we now "collect " with our cameras .
Regards Allan.W.
He may not be fresh as a daisy but until this year I've never seen a butterfly interacting in any way with Round-headed Rampion. That changed this year when I had Common and Chalk Hills both feeding from them but I rather like this pose of a male proudly sat upon his 'Pride of Sussex' on Perry Hill.
Goldie 
