August 2011

[NickB]

I'm using my wide-angle more at the moment...
...for those who like to see the sky....

[Willrow]

I have to agree with Michael and Neil - great report Bill and lovely photos. Happy Days indeed!

That's very kind of you Lee, lets hope we have an Indian Summer full of Happy Days...!!!

Best Wishes,
Bill

[Hugh Middleton]

At last fair numbers of Small Tortoiseshells (9) in the Limewoods on a short visit this afternoon.
Also Red Admirals, Peacocks, Large and GV Whites.

Hugh

[Ian Pratt]

I decided this afternoon to go along one of the small rivers on the Isle of Wight to see if there was anything interesting by way of butterflies or dragonflies. Just as I started the car on the drive, a Southern Hawker came and settled on a japanese anemone plant for about 10 minutes. I stopped the car and took a "few" close -up photos several of which are attached. Although not strictly butterflies it seems that the best things sometimes happen closest to home.

[Michaeljf]

Ian,
great photos and worth posting here even if it's off-topic. Wow! I love the close-up of the eyes. Fabulous colours!
Michael

[David M]

Ian,
great photos and worth posting here even if it's off-topic. Wow! I love the close-up of the eyes. Fabulous colours!
Michael

Absolutely! Looks like a space alien.

[Ian Pratt]

Thanks. Glad you like the pictures.

[Willrow]

Although not strictly butterflies it seems that the best things sometimes happen closest to home

Southern Hawkers are regular visitors to my garden Ian, I guess you can't get much closer than that Can't say I've yet met a Butterfly lover that did'nt also like Dragonflies, their fascinating insects.

Super pics by the way, thanks for sharing them

Regards,
Bill

[NickB]

Spotted a Small White ovipositing - on a patch of Chenopodium album , Fat hen. (Wrong lenses to catch it; will return to check it out).
It spent quite a while there, laying at least 10 eggs in the time. Once again, I can find no reference to Fat hen as LFP, but that doesn't surprise me.
Once one observes butterflies in the field, they never cease to puzzle and inform, in about equal measure...
N

[Hoggers]

I had an hour at Lydden Nature Reserve this afternoon before a hail storm moved in :I saw at least 7 Adonis Blues on the wing- l hope they escaped the deluge.

Quite a few Silver Spotted Skippers were buzzing around too and I managed to take a photo on crash landing.

[NickB]

Nice to see some Adonis and SSS; over here I am just pleased to see some Small Copper and Common Blue in my local Cemetery, loving the Yarrow that has been allowed to grow.

...looks like a gravid female

...quite a few seem to be form caeruleoppunctata

... along with the usual suspects - here's that Small White egg on Fat hen...

Small White ova (taken with 200mm macro and 12mm extension tube)

[Butterflymax]

I've not been out and about much during August, but last Sunday got a pleasant surprise when a Brown Argus landed on the geraniums in my urban back garden. It's always a special moment when I see a species in the garden that I've not seen there before. Unfortunately it flew off before I could get my camera. The only blues I usually see in the garden are Holly Blues. Until May this year I hadn't ever seen a Brown Argus! Oddly, after the three usual whites, the Red Admiral has been by far the most common visitor to the garden this year, greatly outnumbering the Peacock. In the past week I have only seen whites and Red Admirals in the garden.

Has anyone on the forum heard of this before? www.livebutterflygarden.co.uk

You can mail order Painted Lady caterpillars. The company claim to have been doing so for 40 years. Somebody I know bought some for his daughter and successfully bred four Painted Ladies. Having not seen one for a couple of years I'm tempted to give it a go, but thinking it is too late in the season for this year. Given that the Painted Lady supposedly can't overwinter here. it seems a strange choice of species, especially to be advertising now. Surely Peacocks would make more sense.

Max.

[Philzoid]

With Saturday looking the most promising day of the weekend and bank holiday weather for the Southeast, I headed back to Bookham Commons which is turning out ot be a little gold mine for Brown hairstreak. Arriving at aound 1 O'clock I met a work colleague who'd been there since the morning but had not seen anything more than a few Whites; Meadow Browns and a couple of showers (no Gatekeepers funnily enough) . He decided to give up and move onto Denbies. With GVW's and MB flying in the sunny spells I thought i was still in with a chance .
Whilst activity was quiet for the first hour or so, I amused myself by taking photo's of hover flies including this 'monster' doing a good impression of a hornet .

Hornet mimic

There were plenty of hornets too, searching in their predatory fashion amongst the mint and fleabane flowers looking for bees; flies and other insects. The previous week I had seen one carrying a butterfly into a tree where over the course of two minutes, the dismembered butterfly wings came gently floating down one after the other (Meadow Brown).
Back to today and soon after the hornet mimic I managed to photo the real thing, tackling what looked like a common wasp (although the picture doesn't show this clearly)

The real thing with kill

At around 2:30 it all kicked off with three separate sightings of female Brown Hairstreaks in quick succession . All were intent of sunning themselves, going for little walks around various plant leaves and dipping into the blackthorn to deposit the odd egg. Rarely did they keep still, moving on either little short flights to the next leaf or walking around the blackthorn twigs ,,,, before eventually spiralling up and away into the trees. Soon afterwards I came across another in a little flying around fleabane but this one didn't stop to have its picture taken. I can't remember a day in all my recent visits to Bookham Common where the Brown Hairstreak sightings outnumbered the Gatekeepers (albeit at 4 – 1 not large numbers )

female 2 briefly sunning

into the blackthorn

sunning again

The Hairstreak on the Cow Parsley was taken last Saturday (21st), When I first came across it I thought it was a male as it was less vivid than the ones I'd seen the previous week. Looking at these photo's now I'm not sure ...... looks like it might be another female ?

female or male?

[Rebecca]

This weekend has been pretty much a washout so I wasn't expecting to see much. I was in a foul mood earlier because of printer problems and the football, so my husband suggested going out for a stroll with the dogs as it had brightened up. As usual I took my camera just incase I did see something interesting.
When we came out of the woods we walked along a pathway between the woods and the lake and I spotted what looked like an injured Green-veined white. It settled on a leaf and I got closer and it looked like it had 2 sets of wings. As soon as I had lined in up with the camera it flew off.
Anyway I followed it and was watching it up in a tree when my husband spotted something and asked what it was. It turned out to be our very first sighting of a brown hairstreak. I managed to get a distant shot before it flew off. Really wasn't expecting that and so that cheered me up.




Weather looking better tomorrow so planning to visit Fontmell down.

[Paul Wetton]

Great Brown Hairstreaks guys.

Looks like a male on the Cow Parsley Philzoid. Nice shot of the hornet mimic, V. zonaria (I think).

[Philzoid]

Looks like a male on the Cow Parsley Philzoid. Nice shot of the hornet mimic, V. zonaria (I think).

Thanks Paul . A male was my initial impression but it looked more vivid in the photo's (I need a new camera) .

Really wasn't expecting that and so that cheered me up.

I know exactly what you mean Rebecca . Don't know who you support but if by some remote chance it's Sunderland AFC (my team) you definitely need cheering up . (lovely picture by the way )

[NickB]

Take heart, Philzoid; at least you don't support Arsenal......
Quiet day; before I took my turn on the branch BC stand at my local Country Fair, visited a county council-run LNR to check on the grazing situation. The good news was that the cows had gone; unfortunately the sward left is only about 4-5cm tall and very sparse, expect for where the cows left the thistles, nettles and scrub. So the place has been grazed-out pretty much for butterflies from March to July/August and I saw one Small Tortoiseshell, 5 or so Small White, a couple of GVW and about 4 Small Heath that had hung-on in the un-grazed ditch sides, on a site of about 25 acres. No Small Copper, Common Blue, Brown Argus or the dozens of Small Heath that I used to see there before they started this grazing regime.....
(I feel a letter to the county council coming on... )
Plus ca change....
N

[Wurzel]

Nice to see some people are out getting some great shots while I'm busy doing the family thing . Philzoid I like the "into the Blackthorn" shot in particular - it just makes me get the itchy feet, gotta get out tomorrow!

Have a goodun all

[Hoggers]

I found this little chap in the field near my house this weekend

Otherwise it has been very quiet. The flowers look rather empty and although i've been out looking the only Painted Lady i've seen this year was a single on Collard Hill back in June when I was surrounded by Large Blues and unfortunately didn't pay it much attention!

[Michaeljf]

Monday 29th August 2011 – West Williamston (Pembrokeshire)

I’d wanted to return to West Williamston since last year’s trip (also on the August Bank Holiday) but the weather hadn’t been that reliable. I’d decided that with a good forecast this Monday might provide the best time to go – however, we were already a little travel-weary from coming back from Kent the night before. Nikki who does much of the co-ordinating and managing of the reserve had organised a Brown Hairstreak count from 11-12 so I knew the reserve might be a bit more busy than normal.

After a good drive across to west Wales we arrived to clear sunshine at the reserve just after 9pm. However, my confidence in the forecast turned out to be a bit ill-founded as some cloud came over and it was soon clear that shorts and a t-shirt weren’t the best thing to wear this morning! We did an early morning walk at the estuary’s edge, being careful not to slip on the kelp from the morning’s tide. We got back to the car for the early morning organisation from Nikki – there were probably about 16 enthusiasts and local wardens willing to help with the count - and so Karen and I spent the ‘spotting hour’ in what she calls ‘the middle field’. However, the sun kept on coming in and going away again and I knew this was ‘borderline’ conditions (again) for the Hairstreaks. We had 1 possible sighting at the top of an Ash, but otherwise there were only Speckled Woods, Large and Green-Veined Whites, Small Coppers plus a few Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers and one Red Admiral keen to spend time on the ragwort. After our hour we returned to the Estuary banks where there was at least one Painted Lady nectaring from the Sea Asters, plus a few Common Blues making our way past the last field.

We got together with the other spotters just after mid-day and it turned out that the morning was not a big success, with only about 5 Hairstreaks being seen. A couple were in the usual ‘glade’ and some good specimens had been seen at the ‘Limestone Ridge’ further down the reserve. In the glade there were a few nice Commas, plus one Brown Hairstreak briefly dropped down to the Blackthorn. Karen and I would venture out towards the Limestone Ridge later but the weather continued to cloud over and we returned home fairly early in the afternoon as I didn’t think the weather looked like it would improve. All in all, a slightly disappointing trip but only really due to the continuing ‘borderline’ weather conditions. Nikki had also mentioned that the first Brown Hairstreaks of the year had been flying at West Williamston in mid-July, very similar to sightings in Oxfordshire.

Michael


First view of the Estuary in good sunlight, before the first clouds of the day came over!


The path near the Estuary is full of Sea-Aster and Kelp (very easy to slip on..)


A Red Admiral was very attached to the Ragwort in the 'middle field' and would come back during every sun-break.


Plenty of Asters by the Estuary even if they were looking rain battered...


There was at least one Painted Lady enjoying the Asters.


One of the few Brown Hairstreaks on view - this one briefly coming down in the glade.


The Limestone Ridge had been more successful for the Hairstreaks earlier in the day, but not when we arrived..


By the Limestone Ridge there were at least a good selection of Wildflowers in view.