www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Hi Felix,

Funnily enough I spent much of last summer observing bumblebees around Shapwick for an undergraduate dissertation on bumblebee foraging habits (the results should be published in the next SANHS annual review, if you're interested). I did not see sylvarum though this may be because by the time its peak flight season finally came about I was busy writing up the dissertation...

I hear it has been seen in the past couple of years from Berrow and from the Large Blue reintroduction areas in the Poldens.

Shapwick is a fine place for wildlife but the meadows produce the most extraordinary concentration of deer ticks!

Thanks for the link, Matsukaze. This is the fungi I saw earlier. A friend suggested it could be an immature spongiporous, whatever that is. If anyone can identify it I'd be grateful.

I'd give Zonda a nudge. i'm sure he was a mycologist before he started taking annoyingly good pictures of birds

I went for a drive this morning to Five Oaks with high hopes of seeing butterflies but it stayed chilly and nothing was flying so I came home again. I thought it might be warmer this afternoon so cycled along the downs link path to the Bax Castle but still nowt about. there were loads of cuckoo flower out along the route including the white type. Also there is a huge variety of primroses around, some flowers have very long stems, others the more normal form. There are cowslips as well so I wonder if they're interbred; is an oxlip a hybrid? I'll have to do some research.

On the way back I saw a grey wagtail at the mill pond and then later, at home, the oak tree was full of waxwings. The sound they made was incredible!

i seem to using this green with envy quite often on here these days. when you say full....how many are we talking? (do i really want to know)
Chris

I was just walking to the car to go out and hear the noise coming from the tree and my first thought, however bizarre it seems now, is that it was coming from the nest boxes on the trunk. Then I looked up and the top of it was filled with waxwings. My face must have been a picture. There could have been dozens and dozens but I couldnt say with any accuracy. I turned back to the house to get the camera and they were gone. It's another of those moments I won't forget in a hurry, albeit swift.

You will probably have to wait for Zonda to identify your "fungus", but it looks like a slime mould to me... One of the most well-known slime moulds in the UK is descriptively called "Dog Vomit" (lovely! ), but yours looks more like Reticularia lycoperdon. Zonda?

Trev

Hi Trev, you are right, it is slime mould. I had it identified on Facebook and didnt think to update my diary here. Sorry.

I saw my first swallows of the day this morning and it really did feel like summer weather at Five Oaks. The grass has turned a bright emerald green and put on lush growth lately and the lanes are embroidered with a tapestry of flowers. I had hoped to beat the OTs but when I arrived in Five Oaks at 9.30 they were already starting to fly. I saw over a dozen separate males patrolling the lanes but there were probably more, it is so hard to keep an accurate count when they keep criss-crossing each other. There was also a couple of peacocks, a couple of commas and a red admiral. I went into the woods and saw brimstones, more orange tips and my first female orange tip of the year, exactly two weeks to the day after I saw my first male OT. Her wings looked soft and I think she'd emerged that morning. I managed a couple of snaps before she flew off (to be added later). Driving home via Bashurst Hill I saw more orange tips and a brimstone.

When I got home there was an orange tip in my front garden - my first butterfly of the year here. Huzzah! The pond is absolutely chockablock with tadpoles at the moment.

I had to go to work this afternoon but there were still more opportunities for butterfly spotting along the route and I clocked up a few more OTs in BBH, Slinfold, and Rowhook, all of which will be added to the records for Sussex BC.

First of the brown hairsteak eggs in the garden has hatched. Not sure if it safely made it to a leaf bud or not. I shall have to give it a suitable name.

Edit: On the assumption it has made it safely to a bud, and due to the day of it's hatching, it's named THOR.

I went to Denbies again this afternoon to hunt for grizzled and dingy skippers but without success. Found something much better though (in my opinion) a speckled wood and green hairstreaks.

Also seen were brimstone, orange tips, comma, peacock, holly blue and small torts.

Today was the first time I've really played around with the Lumix with the additional lense on that I got for my birthday. I had a chance to compare it to my old camera, the Canon 400D. I must say that I was really pleased with what I managed to get the Lumix to do and compared to the shots I got with the Canon the Lumix seemed better (purely, I suspect, because I am just not very good with the Canon! and it's a bit too complicated for the likes of me ).

Lumix pics as they came out of the camera with nothing done with them apart from being reduced so I can post:- For a first attempt I am very pleased with these. Hopefully I'll improve over the summer

Just missed you at Denbies AGAIN, Susie. I did see two Grizzled Skippers there in the morning as well as the lovely Hairstreaks, but it was a long wait...

Dave

Oh well done with the grizzlies! I thought that they must be there but I just couldn't find them. Next time I go I'll have to announce it in advance. I think Jack is intending to go on Monday and I will try to get along there sometime too then but have family commitments around mid-day so it will probably be later on. I'm hoping to spot Jack there anyway cos I've been wanting to meet him for years!

great shots Sue. I think i could be in the market for the panasonic macro lenses.

Chris

Well I ain't selling. If, however, you want to buy a 400D with a 100mm macro ...

Lovely Green Hairstreak images Suz, you may as well not bother with the Workshop now.



If you are going to sell your 400D, I would get on with it. As digital has been around a while now, the price of camera body's on second hand market is dropping all the time. A Canon 300D, that would of cost around £600 new, would only get you £60 trade in now.

Regards Gruditch

body's on second hand market is dropping all the time.

So do tell us Susie. What price are you asking for your body?

Jack

Hmm, what's the going rate, Jack? It's in very good condition!

Well, I spent this glorious sunny butterflying day stuck at home cooking, cleaning and gardening in preparation for a family get together this afternoon. However, on the upside it did mean I got to watch a brimstone laying eggs on the alder buckthorn in the garden I've been wondering whether to cut down the 12 foot tall buckthorn to get new growth to encourage the brimstones in, now I know I don't need to. Also orange tips flying in the garden and laying on the garlic mustard.

Thanks, Gruditch, high praise indeed coming from you! Okay, you can cancel my place ... NOT!

I think there could be some far better GH pictures coming from the Mighty Hulme anytime soon though so I still have a standard to aspire to insofar as Lumix pics go.

A little bit of film from Saturday which shows one of the green hairstreaks. It was windy, that's not me shaking the camera!

http://www.facebook.com/v/10150215140606972[/video]"

More of the same

Being Easter hols curtails my butterflying activities a tad but I managed to get up to Denbies for a couple of hours today. By jove it was hot! It was windy, the light was harsh as it was lunchtime and the hairstreaks were incredibly skittish and constantly fighting each other so not ideal for getting photos. However, there were loads of them about, I would conservatively say I saw 14 separate individuals and there were probably far more. One looked decidedly tatty already, with one wing ripped to ribbons.

I love the pattern of white dots on the wings of these feisty little chaps. Some have a few, some a whole line and others none at all.
Before I left home there were two female orange tips laying on cuckoo flower and driving along the roads here there appeared to have been an orange tip explosion. I counted more than a dozen in about 50 yards and it was like that at every patch of cuckoo flower along the roadside, which grows commonly around here. I reckon I easily saw over a hundred and probably more like a couple of hundred.

Spring lamb. Delicious!

http://www.facebook.com/v/10150215431756972[/video]