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Grizzled Skipper - Favourite Photo of 2019

Week 7

Another week passes and we’re another week closer to the new season starting – only another 3 months to go now! Closer than that is the Winter Social at the newly refurbished Old Forge, Otterbourne next Saturday – hope to see you there!

Please could I ask that everyone waits until a topic has been opened by me for a particular species before posting photos as then it will be easier to keep track of things? Of course our overseas members are very welcome to fill in the obvious gaps relating to rare UK migrants. As in previous years details of locations, dates, times and circumstances would be welcome as would any accompanying stories and anecdotes or other observations of behaviour and interesting other points.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

I saw these at several sites during the spring but I managed to whittle it down to 3 images.

The sunny Easter this year allowed me to cover a lot of ground. On one of the holiday dates I visited Merthyr Mawr on the coast near Porthcawl, where I saw my only UK Grizzled Skippers of the year:

I only saw Grizzled Skippers on the one occasion in 2019 and that was at Bishops Hill in Warwickshire when I saw about half a dozen.

My favourite shots are the two below, both of the same individual.
Cheers,

Neil.

One of the first delights of the new spring season, I found Grizzlies in a variety of locations this year. I am so used to finding them on chalk hillsides, that the ones I came across at Bentley Wood on 13th May do stand out in the memory.However, the strangest set of photos came from Denbies Hillside (7th May), where this individual was harassing a male Adonis Blue.In the first shot, the Grizzlie is actually curving its abdomen round as if to attempt mating with the male Adonis. The latter was a fresh specimen and maybe the pheremones released on emergence were still around to confuse the other species.

Dave

Grizzled Skipper

There were plenty of Grizzlie shots for me to choose from this year and I thought that I would be spending a merry few hours trawling through the many, many photos in order to choose the single one for the favourite post. And then I reached the start of May and there was the obvious choose staring out at my from the screen – I don’t know how I’d forgotten about it. It was from a spectacular day out with Philzoid. We’d been to Bentley and found plenty of Pearls including my first ever pair in cop and then came the cherry on top of the cake when we visited my Duke Site. It came in the form of my first ever ab.intermedia. Cracking!
Have a goodun

Wurzel

Spent a lot of time and numerous visits to several local sites ,and was lucky enough to find a fair few abberant individuals
and I came very close to a Taras pair ,which coupled for a few seconds ,and for some reason separated .Tried to whittle pictures down to one or two
but was unable to ! in fact ,could have posted more . Also was very pleased to see Grizzles again in Orlestone forest after an absence (or possibly overlooked !) of about 8 years .
Regards Allan.W.

millerd wrote:...However, the strangest set of photos came from Denbies Hillside (7th May), where this individual was harassing a male Adonis Blue....

Quite extraordinary, Dave. That's a combo I've never seen before.