www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

6th July

I had considered the long trek north to Arnside but decided that accommodation cost (pay by room rather than by person) could not be justified. Next year my wife Suzie will have finished the intense study for her Master’s degree and should have some free time when it will be worthwhile for us to go together. The aim then will be for Suzie to learn to distinguish Dark Green and High Brown Fritillaries

So today it was a shortish trip to Bedford Purlieus to west of Peterborough. I soon saw White Admiral

and Silver Washed Fritillaries although the SWFs were careering around madly and never stopped for more than a millisecond.
I managed only some long-range shots.


Eagle-eyed Phil Bromley arrived. Phil can spot a White-letter Hairstreak end-on at 50 metres range on a distant bramble. I have to confess that I only found one hairstreak myself during my entire time in Bedford Purlieus today and that was high up above the trees. So many thanks Phil for the loan of your superb eyesight/fieldcraft.



I returned home in time to watch on TV a group of men having a leisurely bike ride around France. These guys get paid to ride bikes (by foolish people like me who subscribe to Sky Sports) but they seemed to keep falling off or getting punctures resulting from riding on totally unsuitable roads.
This evening I will watch grown men in brightly coloured clothes kick a ball about – I ask you!

I saw no butterflies on the TV today but often the odd white puts in an appearance.

Jack

I remember that White Letter Hairstreak giving a star turn at Wimbledon last year...

8th July - How do you deal with the problem of wind?

Shaking flower perches are not only difficult to focus on but result in blur unless flash is used – which then has an unnatural appearance. Ah well!

Devil’s Dyke northwest from B1102 (Swaffham Prior – Burwell) and Burwell Cutting turned up 100+ Chalkhill Blue


but bizarrely only two Gatekeepers, my first of the year, very late indeed.
Ringlets seem to be having a good season everywhere. This fellow sensibly stayed out of the sun.


Closing in on the target of 50 species for the year; now on 47 with three easy ones to come, Essex and Silver Spotted Skippers, Grayling. Might even get the Essex and Grayling tomorrow when I plan to go to a Breckland site (Cavenham).

Jack

Hi Jack,

I've been reading (and viewing your blog) and I have to say your photos are fantastic - all superb quality. Do you mind me picking your brain?
While I realise that a lot of the work is not so obvious (i.e. time spent waiting, failed visits, driving up and down the country, right time of year/day/weather and knowledge about sites), but there is a lot of detail in there. Are you always using a tripod? What sort of length macro-lens are you using, and with a shot like the Black Hairstreak on the previous page (a real standout in my opinion) did you use a different lens to get so close, or another attachment? Do you use flash or natural light? Are you using a mid-aperture (say, F11) or is the fine detail a result of the tripod/focusing/macro technique?
I can't guarantee I'll change my way of photographing butterflies as a result but I'd be intrigued. I currently use tripod only for landscape photography (panoramics) and I enjoy a break from lugging that around

Michael

9th July
Cavenham Heath in Breckland just to the southeast of Barton Mills (that’s on the A11 London to Norwich road) is a good spot for Essex Skippers and occasionally Graylings are reported. I went there today in scorching heat but no sign of the target species.

Butterflies were in much smaller numbers than usual. The drought is clearly taking its toll even in this area noted for its low rainfall. Grass feeding species seem to be suffering most. Meadow Browns are having a poor year; Cavenham was no exception today. I saw only two Gatekeepers and Small Skippers, normally abundant here, were in much lower numbers than usual.

About a dozen freshly emerged Small Coppers were seen – Cavenham Heath is a very good locality for them – so the small numbers seen to today suggest it’s early days for the summer brood. They loved the Ragwort flowers.

Small Heaths are rarely observed taking nectar. But the delightful Viper’s Bugloss proved irresistible.

A Forester Moth was my first sighting of the species.


Jack

Michael was very flattering:

I've been reading (and viewing your blog).....Do you mind me picking your brain? ....Michael

I use a bridge camera, the Panasonic Lumix FZ38. It’s a compromise. I wouldn’t dispute the fact that big DSLRs give the ultimate in image quality but the cost and bulk (weight) of DSLR gear is not to everyone’s liking. I simply couldn’t cope with a big DSLR at my age and fitness level even though I might wish I could. Hence the compromise. A bridge camera is significantly cheaper and the quality of the results, while not quite DSLR standards, isn’t that much worse – and all for a fraction of the cost.

I never use a tripod although will sometimes use flash so that a very short flash duration can freeze the movement of a shaking flower head in a breeze. The camera’s in-built imager stabilisation copes with any photographer-induced shake admirably.

Bridge (and compact cameras) have very small sensors in comparison with DSLRs. That is the main reason that image quality can never match the best from a big-sensor camera. Life gets complicated over appropriate F stops. Small-sensor cameras run into problems with diffraction at very small apertures. I use mine at F5.6 most of the time.

I often use a supplementary lens, a +2 dioptre achromatic picked up from e-bay for £3 plus a few quid for the necessary adaptor rings. I do recommend achromatic lenses (Google if unsure) as giving far better results than simple close-up lenses.

The FZ38 can be bought new for £220. If I drop it and break it, sure I will be upset. But if I had a DSLR costing five times as much and dropped that, I would be in tears. Moreover, at £220 I can just about afford the latest model every couple of years or so.

Finally, in reply to your query about travelling. I have an economical Peugeot 107. Between mid-September last year when I bought it and mid-April this, I did all of 1,400 miles. In the following three months I have done over 4,500. Mileage will tail off abruptly after the butterfly season and I will probably finish up with an annual total of less than 10,000. I am in the fortunate position of being retired so can pick and chose my days out. I have a good grasp of the weather (I was once a part-time forecaster) so although of course I sometimes get it wrong, I can plan to avoid the really miserable days.

Jack

Jack Harrison wrote:I wouldn’t dispute the fact that big DSLRs give the ultimate in image quality

Jack,
thanks for that - and also for the detail given - the bottom line is that you have to judge from the results, as already commented, if you can get a shot like the Black Hairstreak on the previous page then that's the proof. The landscape shots you're getting have a nice look too. I was suprised to find you weren't using a DSLR. Interesting about the Image-stabilizer working so effectively. The fact that the camera has a small sensor may even be of benefit - i.e. the large size sensors on the more 'pricey' DSLR's are great for wide-angle landscape shots but the medium cost DSLR's (i.e. £500-£700) are often better for wildlife shots. A smaller 1.6 sensor turns a 100mm macro into a 130mm macro or a 500mm lens into an equivalent 630mm lens without paying a higher price (or there abouts - maths was never my strong point). It may be that only on the printed page (as opposed to a website) that you'd only start to see a drop in the quality between your images and a good DSLR image, all things being equal (which they never are!)

As well as a couple of DSLR Canon's I also take an all-in-one camera for bigger trips (Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ65) and it can give great results, and again, gives you the option of several formats and lenses in one (and quick to use). I am sometimes wary of anyone saying you must buy 'bigger and better' and more expensive - we can all be blinded by more expensive equipment. Medium format-camera uses will look down at us poor standard DSLR users, and Large-format camera users will look down on the medium format-camera users (it reminds me of the old 'I know my place' sketch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY)

The bottom line is, keep taking the photos and letting us see them!

Glad to see you are using your weather forecasting skills, I may well be asking you for tips on which direction of he country to go on a daily basis

Thanks again,

Michael

10th July

I decided to explore the local meadows before the heat built up and was out by 0830 hours. And didn’t that pay off

Meadow Brown numbers were better than recently – I guess they are just emerging late this year. Only two Gatekeepers seen so they too are late. Marbled Whites in this newly established colony disappointed with just half a dozen seen although I explored only a small part of the habitat.

Don’t they always do that!


A Comma hutchinsoni showed its pale underside very well.

I walked along the edge of a small wood checking for White Letter Hairstreaks which must surely occur here, although I’ve never seen one. A mere 200 metres from my house: “There’s a nice Silver Washed Fritillary”; it looked perfectly at home on a large clump of bramble. And then the penny dropped: “Bl—dy Hell, a Silver Washed!” They just don’t occur in this area of South Cambridgeshire (or so I had thought). She was ideally placed for the camera. I doubt that it will breed here as it is too overgrown at the base of the trees for violets (larval food plant) to thrive although they do occur in abundance some 400 metres away. I was nostalgically taken back to another hot summer, 1947 (yes 1947) when I caught a vagrant Silver Washed Fritillary in my garden in Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast; I still have the battered specimen with a pin stuck through it.



Jack

Well done Jack...
A frit of any kind in Cambridgeshire is a real red-letter day I reckon. Maybe Susie DID send some up here as requested ;o)


Trev

Hi Jack - There are plenty of sites with violets around S. Cambs (Harlston woods, Barrington etc) along the chalk ridges and where woodlands grow on the clay-capping over the chalk, so it SHOULD have some breeding opportunities. It may be that they DO occur in low densities across the county - they just don't get recorded often...it is also true that they must be the most wide-ranging of all the Frits so these may equally have travelled-in from some distance...
Either way, nice one Jack!
N

Could it be that the fritillaries have just arrived in the area? The species did make a decent-sized jump eastwards during the last sunny summer.

19th July Holme Dunes NNR

My self-produced weather forecast for a find summer’s day was of course correct .

Yes I know I break all the photographic conventions by having the horizon bang in the middle but it seems to work this time – the sky was too delightful to be relegated to second place.

Holme is just east of Hunstanton in northwest Norfolk. I was hoping to see Graylings at this reliable site. I found just three. The only photograph I managed was of a damaged butterfly (note the missing bit of wing),

I suspect it is still early in the season for Graylings in North Norfolk. But it certainly wasn’t early for Dark Green Fritillaries; I saw just one and that was incredibly torn and battered.

Quite the most abundant species was Gatekeeper so I concentrated on taking some “non-standard” pictures

Other species included Small Copper – this one form caeruleopunctata.

Brown Argus, Common Blue, Small Skipper (checked carefully, but no Essex found) and Humming Bird Hawkmoth

Holme is a lovely spot. But I did warn my wife that if I didn’t return this evening, she should send out the search party to look for my car that might be hiding in one of portholes on the access track.

Jack

Where does convention say the horizon should be Jack?

And rules are made to be broken

Cheers

Lee

Standard rule of thirds.

Jack

thirds, schmirds

you know when you have taken a good pic !!

Charles

It was a good pic too.

LH

22nd July

The weather forecast gave showers; these duly materialised. So I stayed at home and cleaned the car before the rain arrived.

I nearly had a nasty accident today while vacuuming the inside of the car. Butterflies were a continual distraction including this Holly Blue.


During one such distraction, I dropped the vacuum. The pipe attached itself to the inside of my shorts. Just imagine if it had attached itself a few centimetres away!

How could I possibly have explained the resulting injury at A & E?

Jack

"I was vacuuming the car, became distracted and fell onto the appliance, which is how you find me. Honest."

"Nurse, the vacuum made amorous advances towards me. A man of my age should've known better, but I was 'drawn in'".
Neil

Jack Harrison wrote: During one such distraction, I dropped the vacuum. The pipe attached itself to the inside of my shorts.

Jack, this already sounds like the excuse..!!!
Come on, you can tell us; What were you actually doing...?