www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

As ever, we hope for warm winds to blow from a favourable direction off the continent to encourage a few migrants to these shores

Lydden reserve, Kent. Under grey skies and borderline suitable conditions this afternoon, butterflies were briefly active. Silver Spotted Skippers, Adonis Blues and Chalkhill Blues, including one that was in surprisingly good condition for September, were all found.

More on my PD-eventually...

essexbuzzard wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 10:32 pm..Silver Spotted Skippers...including one that was in surprisingly good condition for September, were all found.

That IS surprising, Mark. I saw my first on 23rd July yet here we are in September with some males still looking quite fresh.

Yet another overcast, grey sky this afternoon with the briefest glimpse of some sun. Surprised to find an Essex Skipper, certainly late for these parts. Bewley Common, Wiltshire.

Had a few days owing at work ,so we,ve been visiting some of the local gardens ,which we haven,t visited for many years .Today we went to Doddington place gardens near Sittingbourne (Kent ) a glorious garden with some fine displays ,the weather wasn,t particularly "butterfly weather " but that said we did see 3 Red Admirals and 2 Small Torts; and a Hummingbird Hawkmoth + a few tired looking Meadow Browns .
Moving further down into a sunken garden area ,i noticed a small stand of Purple Toadflax ,and amongst them ,and something i haven,t seen before ,a Pink variant . Something else that i haven,t seen before ,and something which i find myself looking for every time i find Purple Toadflax ,is the larvae
of the Toadflax Brocade ,today i cracked it ! and found a fully grown larvae ,right beside the footpath ..............Very pleased with this one !. After our visit to the gardens ,and having a bite to eat in the Chequers at Doddington ,we headed for home . Lynne and Liam had ,had enough so i thought an afternoon trip to Dungeness was on the cards ,the weather had improved a bit ,and was still fairly warm ,although a bit breezy .At Dungeness i,ve found Small Coppers still flying (in the past) in full cloud ,as long as it stays warm ,and today was no exception ,and even in a challenging breeze ,i reckon i saw around 30,most were flying in the more sheltered areas ,out of the breeze, in the moat ,there were also several Small Heath ,bumbling about , and one male Common Blue . Regards Allan.W.

A very heavily marked green-veined white seen today on the Isle of Wight. Is this normal or an aberration?

It's heavily marked, Ian, but not beyond the normal scale of variation in my opinion.

This time last year i was seeing large numbers of Common Blue flying at a small local site ,near home ,but this year the Common Blues seem to be struggling ,and i only managed to find 2 ,a male and a female .
On the plus side ,Small Torts seem to be having an excellent season locally ,and this afternoon i managed to find 6 ,whereas i,d normally be very lucky to see 1. I found around 15 Red Admirals ,and single Comma and Painted Lady ,plenty of Small Whites and Green-veins ,also several Brimstone ...............but only 1 female .
I,ve also posted a couple of final instar Red Admiral larvae that i,ve been rearing.
Regards Allan.W.

Those Red Admiral cats are handsome beasts, Allan. They look as if they'll be constructing their pupation tents any time now.

Under cloudy (but fairly bright) skies I visited Aston Rowant on the Chilterns today (4th). There seem to be more Adonis flying here than down at Denbies, and some are still quite fresh-looking. In fact, as the males wear, their wings develop even more shining iridescence and flash all shades of electric blue as they move around.Females were harder to find, and become damaged more quickly - no doubt because of their need to be down amongst the dense greenery egg-laying.There were a couple of new Small Tortoiseshells as well......plus continuing good numbers of Silver-spotted Skippers. I was surprised to find a brand new female though.She was very tame and allowed for some of the extremely cute shots characteristic of the species. More from the day in my PD at some point - not all that soon though I imagine!

Dave

I was surprised to see a Silver-studded Blue near Lyndhurst yesterday, not familiar with the New Forest, but it seems to be late. Anybody else seen them lately?

Wolfson wrote: ↑Sun Sep 05, 2021 10:03 amI was surprised to see a Silver-studded Blue near Lyndhurst yesterday, not familiar with the New Forest, but it seems to be late. Anybody else seen them lately?

That's amazingly late.

Normally, they are all but gone by August.

Hello Dave (Millerd ),
Yes the Red Admiral larvae , are handsome beasts as you say Dave ,and you,re quite right about the building the final larval tents ,although they,ve almost completely stripped the small (ish) pottled Nettle that they,re on ,so i think that their tents are going to be a bit sparse !
That said ,three of the four are now hanging upside down and are looking good to pupate.
Regards Allan.W.

BUS DAY AT DUNGENESS.
Today at a packed Dungeness ,it was the annual Bus Day , where various buses of yesteryear ,shuttle people to and from Hythe rail station to Dungeness
and then catch the train back to Hythe from Dungeness .............its very popular ! must do it sometime ,shortly after i took this shot ,2 more turned up ! We decided to do a longer ,different route to our norm ,and pleased that we did ,we also decided to do a count of the Small Coppers ,we started from the main cafe car park ,and proceeded out towards the trapping area,and started finding Small Coppers immediately ,they were certainly out in some numbers After about half an hour we were on around a hundred ,and we bumped into Dave Walker (Obse;warden ),who told us that he,d already counted over a hundred ,in the central ,inner area of the Moat .We were finding Coppers on nearly every clump of Ragwort we looked at ,with sometimes as many as eight ,on a single flower head ,in all ,our route took us in a very large circle ,taking in two thirds of the moat and the power station fence ,and our final total was an incredible 411 ! we also noted 3 Common Blues ,3 Brown Args,1 Small Tort ,a few Meadow Browns and whites ,and unusually ,a single Small Skipper.
This last Copper ,is a bit of a star .....................number 400 ! Curiously (and apart from a few Blue Spots ) no real Abberations were found ...........................but no matter ! A great morning at Doungeness.
Regards Allan.W.

Great pic with the buses Allan. It looks like a still from Holiday On The Buses !

We had a 3rd year school day trip to Dungeness from High Wycombe (circa 1978). Amazing place, it seemed very other-wordly. Can't believe I haven't been back since, especially as I now live in mid Sussex. Need to put that right.

Took a wander much closer to home yesterday - Wolstonbury Hill.

Lots of moths there, including a number of carpet-types and their associates.....yes, that's right the allied carpets. I recognised Common Carpet and Purple Bar anyway.

There were LOADS of moths of the type shown in my last snap below. Seemed to be present in their hundreds. If anyone can ID it I'd be very grateful.

Hi,
The last moth is probably a Lesser Treble-bar. There is a Treble Bar, very similar, always confusing.
Cheers

Maurice

Yesterday at Chobham Common Graylings were abundant with 60 counted.

Not numbers of anything else with:

Small White 10
Green-veined White 1
Brimstone 1m
Gatekeeper 3
Speckled wood 2
Small Heath 1
Red Admiral 3
Peacock 2
Silver-Y 1
Vapourer 1m

Otherwise Golden-ringed Dragonfly, several Migrant Hawkers & Common Darters, 2 Willow Emerald, Small Red Damselfly.

Almost trod on a small Adder & a Common Lizard.

A warm sunny morning at last so I made a visit to one of my favorite corners of Somerset, Muchelney is a small hamlet where time has stood still, the NT property, the Priest's House is a late medieval hall-house, Muchelney Abbey is close by, they were both closed but luckily the resident caretaker of the very attractive Priest's House came along and obligingly allowed me to taket pictures of the house and its neat little garden, Muchelney Church is also worth a visit and has some handsome Ham stone tombes, whilst at the garden I saw four Large Whites my first for the year.

Pictured the Priest's House more pictures can be seen here.
https://jamesgibbs6929.zenfolio.com/p12 ... #hb819f3ee

meiga wrote: ↑Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:00 pm Hi,
The last moth is probably a Lesser Treble-bar. There is a Treble Bar, very similar, always confusing.
Cheers

Maurice

Thanks a lot Maurice. I've just taken a look and you are right, the two are very similar (maybe I should have taken more pics of other individuals).

But I would agree with you that my snap looks more similar to the Lesser Treble-bar images I'm looking at.

They were certainly very common. I was flushing them out very regularly along the paths but others seemed to be flying about of their own volition. I suppose I could have been looking at a mixture of Trebles and Lesser Trebles !

It was certainly a good day for Carpet type moths. I only saw one Purple Bar, a snap of which I've attached below (if you can find the moth in there !). Unfortunately couldn't get a close up before it was off. I'm fairly confident I've ID'd it correctly, but happy as always to be corrected.

Cheers again for pointing me to the Lesser Treble-bar.

HI

Yes, I would go with Purple Bar. A common species I get in my garden, coming to the moth lamp.

I had the same problems with the Lesser Treble-bar and Treble Bar a few years ago on Broughton Down and Stockbridge Down. Lots about, disturbed at regular intervals. All my images were of Lesser Treble-bar.

Cheers

Maurice

This last Sunday (5/9/21) i visited 3 Kent sites in the one day, in the hope of finding a Clouded Yellow or two. But no such luck, none were seen...this same time last year, i was finding good numbers of fresh UK Clouded Yellows, oh well, theres always next season/year maybe?!

1st 2 sites visited was pretty quiet, but the 3rd site (Queensdown Warren) was quite good. Adonis Blues/Brown Argus in good numbers, still good numbers of Meadow Browns on the wing, but not many Common Blues.

Highlight of the day was finding a fresh female Adonis Blue ab. She lacked most of her underwing spots/dots, she was slightly smaller than average too. A tiny male Adonis was also seen, not much bigger than a Brown Argus!!

Several shots, no images are cropped. Cheers Paul.
P.S. Just 6 bites/stings this week, compared to well over 20 hits last week!!


That lovely fresh female Adonis Blue ab. Then an open wing image of her.
A couple of Brown Argus images late in the day (basking at 6.30pm). They look like probable females to me? Really pleased with this last shot, getting this close up to a small butterfly, an capturing focus on all 4 wings/body/head ect. was nice.