Thanks all!
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Goldie, I've been quite lucky with Small Coppers this year. Always lovely to see them. On which note...
05/08/2018 - pootling about East Yorks
My partner had a couple of childhood friends visiting this weekend. I agreed to taxi duty whilst they did girlie things in the knowledge that I could drop them off and spend some time exploring a few different sites to usual, in the Hull area, while I waited!
The first such site was the car-park of the
Beech Tree pub in the suburban 'village' of Willerby (officially this is separate to the city of Hull, but I challenge anybody to look at a satellite photo and tell me where Willerby ends and Hull begins!). This is apparently a good spot for White-letter Hairstreaks, and reports are still dribbling in of these from various parts of Yorkshire. But the bramble beneath the elm was all over, so I wasn't optimistic. I gave it half an hour, during which time several Holly Blues flew by without stopping, but no luck.
With all of the Holly Blues about, I decided to move a mile up the road to
Wood Lane - a site I have visited several times to sample Speckled Woods, and have often seen HBs close up as they nectared on brambles by the path. Worth a try...
I knew I didn't have long to spend here, but I was only about 100m down the lane when I saw the first HB. It initially seemed to be playing peek-a-boo...
...but soon came around the flower to drink.
In total I counted 6 HB flying together along a 30m patch of brambles - by far the highest density I've ever seen. They were joined by good numbers of Specklies, my sampling evidently not having dented the population! (phew...
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
)
I got the call to pick L up and started heading back to the car, pausing to snap one more HB as it posed on Ivy.
Having seen L's friends back up the road and cooled down with an ice-cream, I suggested we pop into
Kiplingcotes for a stroll on our way home. I'd not been for about a month as the Marbled Whites would be long gone, but I'd had a tip-off from
millerd that he'd recently seen Wall Brown here! Worth a try...
There was a tatty, but still nice, Comma on the path down to the reserve which posed nicely.
Lots of Common Blues were flying, many of them pretty fresh - we're borderline here whether this species is univoltine or bivoltine in any given year, but this is clearly a second generation.
Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers are starting to look a little bit tatty, but every one gave me a momentary buzz before I found it was another not-a-Wall!
We spent quite a while searching the sheltered corner where millerd had seen his Walls, but with no luck. Well, not
no luck - there was a lovely Small Copper!
Just as we were about to give up, I walked to the meadow above the pit and looked back down the bank into it - to see not one but two Wall Browns flying, totally inaccessibly, near the top of the steep slope! Thus ensued about 20 minutes of scrambling, slipping, and near misses, during which I put horrendous grass stains down my best 'smart' shorts!
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
Nothing better than record shots to show for it...
...but my conservative estimate was that I saw at least 7 Wall Browns - perhaps the population here is a bit healthier than I gave it credit for.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)