Thanks, Goldie. Yes, I've heard about the Large Heath reintroduction. Hopefully it will be a success and give you a new species to see locally very soon.
Wednesday 24th June – Daneway….
Few things are finer in life than rising early in the morning on a glorious midsummer’s day. However, even finer perhaps is arriving at Daneway Banks at 7.50am and finding you practically have the place to yourself.
The reduced footfall is possibly due to the problems the site was suffering in early June because of the extended spell of hot, dry weather, which obviously had an adverse effect on much of the habitat.
Thankfully, things have recovered somewhat following the wet spell from 3rd June onwards, and whilst the sward is noticeably shorter than usual, it still looks in reasonable shape:
I wasn’t sure how many Large Blues would be around, but I needn’t have worried; I saw 31 in total in just two and a half hours, which is the most I’ve ever seen here, and the early start meant several of them were resting with wings open:
This female was particularly accommodating as she pottered around the marjoram on an egg laying run:
I was also fortunate to find this mating pair:
There were frequent jousts, with this one seeing three Large Blues chase one another:
Plenty of other butterflies around too, with Marbled Whites and Meadow Browns in the hundreds, lots of Large & Small Skippers, a few vanessids and a couple of Dark Green Fritillaries.
I reckon there’s still a couple of weeks worth of Large Blue activity here, so anyone wanting to visit should do so as soon as they can.