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You are doing well with the Red Admirals and Small Coppers.

You're right, Katrina - the Small Coppers are doing really well in their third brood here and we've been blessed with a good number of migrant Red Admirals too.

The weather promise for Sunday 15th September was that the warm sunshine would continue, but for longer towards the south coast. To me that was a clear signal to make the trip to High & Over in Sussex to see the third brood Walls - especially as Trevor's reports sounded encouraging. An fairly early start and an uneventful drive into the forecast sunshine saw me at the traditional hotspot by the steps at around half ten.

It was still reasonably cool, and the Walls were only just beginning to start patrolling up and down the hedge. They would even stop and bask a little!Even so, undersides were probably easier to come by.I only saw one female - she wafted along the hedge line higher up on the ivy, only stopped once anywhere close and unfortunately kept her wings shut as soon as the camera was pointed at her. She was clearly very new.Also seen in this splendid spot were multiple Red Admirals nectaring on the ivy, several Large Whites breezing through, Speckled Woods along the wooded tracks and a single female Small Copper attempting to lay but constantly being disturbed by the Walls. A very successful visit to one of my favourite spots.

Dave

Cracking set of Walls Dave - hopefully they'll make up for the 'missing Shipton ones' One of those seems to have the extra eyes, ab.bipupillata?

Have a goodun

Wurzel

Cheers, Wurzel - yes, those Walls went some way to compensate for the loss of the Shipton photos, but unfortunately the best of those was a rather fresh and obliging female... Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes.

As usual with visits to the Sussex coast, I decided to stop off at two other sites on the way back on 15th September.

The first of these was at Tidemills near Newhaven, in the past a favoured spot for migrant butterflies. However, aside from the currently ubiquitous Large and Small Whites, all I encountered were a small group of Common Blues around one of the patches of BLEP (to be fair, the spot also had lots of Birds'-foot Trefoil) and Small Heaths popping up out of the grass every so often. Bypassing Brighton, I then drove on to Mill Hill near Shoreham, where in many previous years there have been a great variety of late season butterflies including Clouded Yellows. I parked at the further end, and before descending to the lower part of the hillside I had a good look around the various bits of hedge and areas of grass - and found virtually nothing at all. Normally I would have expected a few tired blues (or even a few fresh third brood Common ones), plus a series of Walls patrolling the edges of the thickets, but my search turned up just one of the latter.My usual route from here down to the bottom lies through the trees in a more gentle zigzag, but today the paths were completely blocked by rampant vegetation. The only way down was the extremely direct way via the rudimentary and very steep steps - successfully negotiated but not without a few knee-twinging moments. The area at the bottom to be perfectly honest, looked a complete mess. Everything aside from the one main path was completely overgrown and there were virtually no flowers left. Consequently butterfly life was limited to one or two Small Heaths and Meadow Browns and a handful of worn Adonis Blues. There were a couple of what were probably females of the species too, but they would have struggled to track down any larval foodplant under the grass.I returned to the car along the top path, but even this was blocked by vegetation and i had to divert onto the road at one point.

I realise that this is not perhaps the best time of year to see this site, but knowing how it has looked in previous seasons at this time it really seemed to be in a sorry state.

Dave

Fantastic Wall shots Dave there always on the move when you want them to settle usually, when I try to get a decent shot Goldie

Lovely looking Wall Dave A few years back was the 'year of the wind' when shots were hard to come by without a buffeting and it seems 2024 was the year of rampant growth - pretty much every site I've visited has been chock full and sometimes choked by grasses, or Wild Parsnip/Giant Hogweed It would be nice to have a 'normal' year

Have a goodun

Wurzel

Thank you, Goldie - I think I caught those Walls just early enough in the morning for them not to dash off every time I came close.

Cheers, Wurzel - yes, grasses overgrowing everything almost everywhere. The exception has been my local patch because of the major haircut in mid-July, which seems to have been very beneficial in this unusual year. There are still loads of flowers even now.

After (aside from that single Wall) the disappointment of Mill Hill, it was really refreshing to go out locally the following day (Monday 16th September) and see well over 100 butterflies of 13 different species. It was very sunny (10 hours) and warm (21C), which certainly helped.

Here is the result of the day's count:

Small Heath 21
Red Admiral 16
Small White 12
Small Copper 11
Comma 10
Large White 10
GVW 10
Speckled Wood 9
Brown Argus 8
Holly Blue 6
Common Blue 5
Meadow Brown 3
Peacock 1

The clear stars of the day were the Coppers - 11 is the highest total I think I've seen here for a few years and especially so coming after such a poor showing in their second brood (maybe they missed a brood out?). Another female Holly Blue was also a bit of a star too, but I'll start with a selection of the others.One of the Holly Blues stayed up on the ivy flowers...but it was the behaviour of a couple of the others that was interesting. I'll devote a separate post to that - and another to the Coppers.

Dave

16th September - Holly Blues

There were plenty of damp patches of path along my usual route, and for once I remembered to look ahead and spotted the familiar silvery triangle of a puddling male Holly Blue......or so I thought. The butterfly flew up onto some nearby nettles and revealed itself to be a female.She returned to the ground a few times, during one of which she was accosted by a male, but shook him off in short order.Having always thought that the males were the ones seen puddling, taking on minerals to bestow as a "nuptial gift" when mating, it seems the females sometimes miss out the middleman...

Though she did return to the ground again, it was never for long, and in the end she spent more time basking in the sunshine. That just leaves all the Small Coppers...

Dave