Sunday 31st August: With reasonable weather forecast today, I made an effort to see some Brown Hairstreaks without going too far from home. This meant a shortish drive down to Bookham Common, where I was lucky enough to find one last year. I parked in the Hundred Pound Bridge car park at midday and set off down the small path at right angles to the main track. Compared to last year, the bracken has spread enormously along this path, and combined with bindweed and encroaching bramble, the blackthorn in some places is becoming swamped. I started to see a few butterflies: Speckled Woods and a couple of Meadow Browns, followed by two or three Commas.
As I progressed to where the path runs between hedges next to a field, I spotted a fluttering of orange in the next patch of sunlight. Round the kink in the path, there it was - a female Brown Hairstreak. It was a bit worn, lacking tails, but it briefly half-opened its wings before disappearing high into the hedge.
However, within five minutes, I caught sight of another female down on a bramble leaf. This one was in better condition, but wasted no time while the sun was shining, skipping off to some blackthorn low down where she wandered animatedly in and out of the twigs looking to lay. If the sun went in, she stopped dead - completely invisible to casual observation - and then a burst of sunshine would revive her activity. After a few minutes, she re-emerged and basked again, before disappearing on the field side of the blackthorn hedge, where there were many more egg-laying opportunities.
Unexpectedly, I had seen two Hairstreaks, and without really looking! I took a few moments to examine the younger blackthorn shoots nearer the ground, and within a short time, I had found an egg - only a foot above the ground at most. Another good result.
I walked on a bit to where the hedge next to the field peters out and is replaced by wildflowers, and soon came across a Common Blue or two and a Small Copper.
Pleased with a most successful outing, I ambled gently back down the path, encountering nothing more than a few more Speckled Woods and a Small Tortoiseshell.
However, just before the car park, there is a small pond near the eponymous Hundred Pound Bridge, very overgrown but currently with some of the rampant vegetation cut down. I saw a Comma down there, briefly jousting with something smaller, so went to investigate. The something else turned out to be a third Brown Hairstreak, which obligingly sat for a few minutes before flying a little way to investigate some low-growing blackthorn. After emerging from here, it flew up into a tall piece of the same shrub (a tree, really) and stayed put.
From here it was less than fifty metres to the car, but astonishingly I saw a fourth Brown Hairstreak before I reached it. One appeared at ground level, fluttering for some distance over the grass and settling briefly on it at one point. Having reached my car before me, it flew vertically up into an oak tree and disappeared.
Four individual butterflies, an egg, and some interesting behaviour - quite a walk!
(And Brown Hairstreak is my 50th species of 2014 too.
)
Dave
EDIT: I took some video of Hairstreak No.2 as she meandered through the blackthorn - and upon reviewing this I now realise I caught her in the act of laying the egg pictured above. now I'll just have to work through the process of posting the footage!
D.
Some great reports recently with cracking shots of a great range of species, those Commas are especially lush 
Your best bet would be to check the 'Daily Diary' on the Durlston website or maybe give them a ring? Good luck with it 
Also does that Small Copper have traces of blue spots?