www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Thanks, Nick and Nick. I've no idea why this species is called the 'hermit' - perhaps the 'caddy' would be a better name, with those golf clubs sticking out of its head.

David M wrote:Do Hermits ever settle with their wings open, Guy?

As my experience of the butterfly so far is limited to one very pleasant morning, I can't claim any authority on this! None of the males I saw settled with wings open, though one, on dung, did briefly pause in this position. If the butterfly is like other graylings, the best opportunities will be when males and females are together. This is a pair of tree graylings last year:



And these are rock graylings in 2007:



In both cases, the female is saying 'no'!

Some graylings also show their uppersides when wandering over dung - I don't know why! Another tree grayling:



Roger has a lovely female hermit, form pirata, showing the upperside of its wings on his site, here: http://www.butterfliesoffrance.com/html ... r_05Sep09_, so it obviously does do this!

I will be going back in a couple of weeks for females, weather permitting, and might get some upperside shots then.

Guy

Those golf clubs in close-up:









PS - I notice Pauline has some lovely grayling upperside shots in her diary, taken when a pair were courting.

Guy

Beautiful fresh male Hermits – I only get to see them when they have been out for a few weeks as I don’t get back to Var until late August. It’s mainly females then, and they are significantly larger than the males. They don’t ever settle with open wings in my experience but the uppersides are rather visible in flight and quite unusually white in appearance, especially the females.

The form pirata was spotted by Tim Cowles, whose eyesight is far sharper than mine. It flashed its wings open to scare off predators from time to time (a not uncommon behaviour of Satyrids) and I was poised above with the camera set to 5 frames/second and having my reactions tested – this was the only decent shot out of 60, so please don’t assume this is in any way normal Hermit behaviour.

Sadly, its range is diminishing rapidly in France but non-one seems to know why.

Thanks for that additional information, Roger.

Although this year has been disastrous in my local wood for adult purple emperors, a wandering empress evidently passed by at some stage, leaving a few goodies:



In fact, that's the only one I found but doubtless she laid many more (she should be expected to lay about 200). The sallows are growing back very fast, so as long as the ride remains on the egg run of a few females all will be well. It is possible the egg is Aurelian's offspring but fairly certain it is at least a nephew or niece, perhaps once or twice removed.

Very heavy storms battered us last night and the woods seemed strangely deserted (in terms of butterflies - I'm always the only human there). A few silver-washed fritillaries, a single white admiral and a single white-letter hairstreak shared the ride with more numerous Scotch argus, meadow browns, large walls, ringlets, large skippers and blues (holly, Provençal short-tailed, common). The odd great banded grayling flounced through.

I'd be interested in any comments on the sex of this white-letter hairstreak. I first thought it was male, from its general appearance, then changed my mind because of the swollen abdomen. However, it appears to have the impress of the sex brand under the forewing. If it really is a female then bang goes the theory that that is indeed the sex brand showing through!







Unfortunately, it flew before I could get a look at the other side.

Here are a Provençal short-tailed blue and a holly blue:





This picture shows how attached holly blues can get to their piece of poo ...



I was moving it out of the wheel rut of the track in case one of the foresters came along!

Guy

Hello G

The body shape of the WLH looks female including the pointy end of the abdomen. Could it be a small tear in the wing that gives the impression of a sex brand.

Hi Guy,

There are certainly conflicting signals on this individual. They are easy to sex when they are fresh because the famales have a lighter ground colour to the wings and longer tails. The size and shape of the abdomen is usually a clincher as well. For me the forewing says male, the hind wing female and the abdomen female.

I have noticed however that the forewings of females are not completly smooth in the area where the male sex brand is located. Have a look at the images taken by badgerbob and Pauline on the Species album http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species. ... es=w-album. These are clearly females.

Interestingly there appears to be no indication of any raised features in this area of the underwing in Richard Lewingtons illustrations of the species.

Vince

padfield wrote: ...
I'd be interested in any comments on the sex of this white-letter hairstreak. I first thought it was male, from its general appearance, then changed my mind because of the swollen abdomen. However, it appears to have the impress of the sex brand under the forewing. If it really is a female then bang goes the theory that that is indeed the sex brand showing through!



Guy
.

Yes, possibly the direction of the light in your image may have created a linear shadow along a slightly raised wing vein creating that impression.

Greedy overfed male butterflies can have abdominal dimensions larger than a normal female. At first glance, that appears a female. Second glance even but I would not bet too much on it. I'd risk a fiver though..... There are marks on one/either side of the tip of the abdomen which resemble those tell tale marks sometimes left where the male's claspers have taken a really strong grip during copulation.

There again, it could be a male. .... .... Third thoughts:~

My Jury is still out ...
.

Thank you for your thoughts, Paul and CC. You seem to agree that the abdomen looks girly, though CC doesn't want to commit himself to this 100%. I will record an open verdict, given that the wing shape and apparent sex brand strongly suggest a male. Next year I shall pay more attention to sexing these butterflies.

For the record, here are a confirmed male and female from the same colony, this year:


(Male)


(Female)

The female is obviously considerably more worn but the longer tails are still apparent (as they are on other female photos late in the year) and the forewing is open and rounded.

After making my earlier post and looking for something to eat I discovered to my horror there was no beer in the house. So straight onto the bike and down to the valley, passing via my short-tailed blue meadow to see if it had recovered from its July scything - or more probably mowing. The answer is that it hasn't recovered. It had been mowed to within inches of its life and very few nectar sources or larval host plants had survived - there was bare ground in places. A shame. It won't necessarily be the end of the short-tailed blues, because they can move in from nearby colonies (there are a handful very close together), but I think it might have broken the continuous six-generation sequence I have observed there for the last three years.

There were a few common blues, gamely going about business as usual, and I was just thinking one would make a good photo when the lep equivalent of a scud missile came spinning across the meadow from the other side and scuttled it. It then took out two more common blues before twisting and turning at lightning speed back whence it came. It was, of course, a long-tailed blue.

There were two long-tailed blues with slightly overlapping territories and I watched for about half an hour before I had worked out the domains and habits of each. One had base camp at the very edge of the mown area and would rest for about 20 seconds on grass stems between each round of proactive agression. Flying up from his grass stem he would first zoom out across the meadow to attack the long-suffering common blues, then come back to base camp and spin up and down the edge of the meadow, then finally he would head in the other direction until he met his rival and the pair of them would rise 100m into the sky, where they disappeared. He would then descend and take another 20-second breather on a grass stem. SO, while he was out on patrol I snuck in and knelt down next to one of his resting places. Here he is:



He is in quite good nick considering his extreme agression and is obviously a generation on from this one I saw in the same place on July 4th:



He might be a home-grown boy.

It is worth keeping an eye open in the UK any time from now on for these spinning furies, which I think must be under-recorded. They are rather small blues, and appear more so in flight because they are dull coloured even when fresh. Males are very alert and wary. In the vicinity of a suitable food plant (pea family - preferably showy and fragrant) they set up territories but otherwise are highly mobile. They are not resident in Switzerland but migrate in from Mediterranean regions every year, like painted ladies, and many of them continue northwards. I've seen them in Brittany, in the Channel Islands and one in Suffolk.

Guy

Sorry Vince - I didn't see you'd replied too (in my haste to get to the telly and watch the cycling)! I didn't deliberately snub you! Your take seems the same as mine. Perhaps, as CC suggests, this is an end-of-season male that has spent the last week or so guzzling ... Or perhaps it's a female and the raised area is a red herring. But it is in just the place where the sex brand is on the upperside.

I remain uncertain.

Guy

Guy, in your experience, what is their ( WLH ) larval foodplant on mainland Europe?

I ask because although I first found pupae on Wych Elms back in the 1950s as a schoolboy, much later when searching for Black and Brown Hairsteak ova on Prunus spinosa [Blackthorn] in the the midlands, I found a single ovum of the WLH on that Blackthorn.

I believe other species of Hairstreak use Blackthorn on mainland Europe too.

In my woods it is exclusively wych elm. Gabriel Hermann (Tagfalter suchen in Winter) cites also small-leaved elm and white elm and states that he has found eggs on common buckthorn. I've not heard of blackthorn being used. You are right that blackthorn is used by sloe hairstreaks (not surprisingly!) too on the continent. Ilex and false ilex both use oak while blue-spot uses various buckthorns (principally).

Here are blow-ups of the undersides of the known male, first, and today's insect (flipped horizontally to make easier comparison):





They both have a roughly oval relief in the upper corner of the cell, rather than simply a raised disco-cellular vein, as in the females noted by Vince from the UK Butterflies gallery. I don't want to overdo this, but I had considered it a useful way of sexing worn insects and now find this cast into doubt!

Guy

I know I'm getting very boring!

Some say the eyes have it - bigger in the male. Here are a known male, a known female and today's butterfly, in that order (all taken this year - sorry about the quality!):


(male)


(female)


(unknown)

The female is at a slightly smaller scale, so it's not that easy to compare, but I think the last one looks more like a male eye, if this really is an indicator.

Guy

If you could also show magnified close ups of the ends of the abdomens of known sexed WLHs, this should be a more informative and reliable indicator.

All things considered, I'm now leaning towards the specimen in question being a bloated overfed male.

That's more of a challenge, CC! I've looked at quite a few photos of males and their abdomens are all neatly tucked behind their hindwings. Here's the best I can do in a short time:

Known male (not much use, I know!):


Known female (gravid - but so is today's, if it is a female):


Today's:


Guy

Excellent. They are more reliable indicators. In the top close up, you can see claspers. In the lower two close ups, I cannot see claspers.

Having seen those close ups, I believe the original unknown quantity is a female and would wager double my original fiver this time ... but not a penny more as these things can be very hard to be 100% certain.... .

Thank you! A very interesting discussion - and I've learnt that my rule-of-thumb about the sex brand being visible as relief on the underside is just a rural myth (or at least, so says a tenner from CC).

Guy

Cotswold Cockney

...would wager double my original fiver this time...

There speaks a man with some experience in this field

Jack

Hi Guy,

I've only just looked at this thread and I find myself in the unusual position of disagreeing with the mightily experienced CC. To me it's male on every count and I believe your sex brand lower surface impression criterion holds true. This feature, which is very different to the irregular relief seen in a similar area on females, has held true for every hairstreak I've ever examined in this way and I regard it as totally reliable.

Eye dimension is a little-known but very reliable way of sexing many species, and this conforms to male.

The tail length (lower) is spot-on for male and shows no sign of erosion – it is the correct profile at the tip. Top tail eroded.

Abdomen shape says ‘male’ to me and your last set of comparative images clearly show the inflated area extending further towards the tip in the female. Only recently several people have sent me images to get a sex determination of W-l H, and one (I think Mark Colvin, who’s different image of the same [male] insect is shown in his diary), showed a similar abdominal profile. Male W-l Hs can have quite plump backsides, but they do taper rapidly at the distal end.

We can see no evidence of claspers (or opening) in the questioned specimen, but this is due to the angle from which the shot is taken.

I don’t make financial wagers, but ‘male’ or I’ll eat my hat (the topper).

Neil

He who dares ....

Cotswold Cockney wrote: .
.... but not a penny more as these things can be very hard to be 100% certain.... .
.

I have been known to lose the occasional bet. I would not much miss a couple of fivers. However, I do not relish the prospect of eating clothing. So shan't ever go there ... So, offer withdrawn forthwith...

Food for thought with a tad of lateral thinking.

I have bred a Limenitis populi which has the visual properties of both sexes exactly 50-50 split down the middle. One clasper on one side only. Then of course other ratios of intermediate random mixes have been known in numerous instances. If only life was really always so simple. It rarely is so I wonder. There again, it may simply be a greedy overfed male.
.

The fault is mine for not taking a better picture - but I was really out looking for emperor eggs. It was only just before the hairstreak flew that I noticed the abdomen didn't fit with the general impression I had of a male.

The thistles in my woods have been exceptional this year and it is not surprising if some ageing males have drunk to excess. I didn't know butterflies consumed sufficient quantities to change their body shape - amazing.

Thank you Kipper for your analysis. It certainly requires less mental effort on my part to see that as a fat male than a female, so, being inherently lazy, I will work on the assumption you are right! I doubt there will be opportunities to find the same insect again, after rather aggressive hail storms last night, so will just have to live with what uncertainty remains, whether a tenner's worth or a hatful.

Guy