www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Ok, bit excited again... Did a search of my netted branches and have found five lovely lime green larvae! Quite a number of the eggs hadn't hatched, but of those that had I mostly found the larva. I've only checked about 2/3rds of the nets so far but it seems the ones on the east facing tree seem to have done better than the west facing one. Trees are covered in white fly (got covered in them when checking the nets!) and aphids. The nets do seem to have protected the leaves from the white fly mostly.

I've taken the larvae in and plan to rear them through now. They've experienced the outside for quite a while now and it would be good to protect them for the last bit through pupation to hatching. Be lovely if I get to see one of them hatch.

Who'd have believed it, Brown Hairstreak breeding in my own garden.
Cheers

Chris

Some of them have turned purple and have settled down to pupate.

And now they have pupated.
Cheers

Chris

Well, the first of my Brown Hairstreaks has hatched - it's beautiful. Unfortunately I missed the actual hatching, but when I let it go it obligingly sat on a leave in my garden to allow me to take some photos. Two more to go!

The other two have hatched and flown off. So of the 30 eggs I found in my plum trees 3 have made it to adulthood, 10% success rate. Don't know if that is a good rate. Hopefully they will be successful breeding and I'll find more eggs laid in my trees later this year.

Cheers

Chris

I thought brown hairstreaks would have a higher success rate than 3% but did more hatch out of eggs but just fail to pupate?

Quite a number of them seemed not to have hatched. There were also some that had hatched but I never found the larvae. I had netting over the eggs and had a good search when I took it off. It's possible I missed some and they did make it to pupation. Not a veri scientific study I am afraid.