Hi All,
Grafton Wood is an excellent site, east of Worcester,well maintained be West Midland BC. I arrived just before 10am on Monday 19/8/13. and went to the pond area on the north-west side of the wood, where recent reports of BROWN HAIR-STREAKS had been seen. The temperature was still cool and not much was flying yet, so after an hour or so, with only a few peacock's, comma's and small tortoiseshell's flying, I moved to the old orchard area some 200 metres south of the pond.
Here I met Dave Williams, a member of West Mid. BC and together we went along the outer perimeter of the wood, which is mainly blackthorn with a few brambles mixed in. After a few minutes Dave spotted a BHS landing on the blackthorn about 7/8 feet up the tree, it started to nectar and wasn't moving far from it's original landing spot, the sun was out now and we spotted 4/5 BHS flying in the vicinity and again landing on the blackthorn and brambles, posing nicely for us.
One landed on a blackthorn sapling only 2 feet high, it began weaving it's way down to about a foot off the ground and laid 2 pinhead size white eggs, fantastic, but too small to capture on my camera, unfortunately. When the sun went in the BHS opened their wings, allowing us to get some photo's of them in all their glory.
The BHS started flying about 11.30 am and were still flying at 1.30pm when we had to leave, we had come down from Lancashire mainly for the BHS but also saw Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Small Copper,
Silver-washed Frit., small, large and green-veined Whites, Brimstone, Gatekeeper, Common Blue, Brown Argus, Meadow Brown, Painted Lady and Speckled Wood.
I missed a Clouded Yellow by 10 minutes, confirmed by 2 different people, again in the orchard area, I have seen them in France but not in England, but I'd had a brilliant day and would recommend Grafton Wood as an excellent butterfly site.
Russ
submitted photo's I hope you like them
