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Large White - Favourite Photo of 2022

Week 9

Fingers crossed the recent cold snap will have knocked various parasitoids on the head so there will be one less pressure on the butterflies next year. While we wait we can always slect6 our favourites…speaking of which if you haven’t already it might be a good idea to think about your overall favourite now so that you don’t ‘use it up’ in the species specific threads…

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

Seen a few in my Aberdeen garden in August.

I moved into my Bungalow on the 1st of July and on the 27th I saw the Large White , hope fully I'll see more here next year. Goldie

The Large White is not a numerous species in my local area, with no more than two or three seen at best on any given day. They are largely arboreal, flying around the tops of the trees and roosting there, with only occasional forays out to nectar - though this happens more later in the season. Males are far more commonly seen, and I find I only have one or two shots of females in the 2022 collection. Dave

This fresh female on a visit to the Chilton's after Small Blue gets my vote this year.

For the second year in a row, there were Large White larvae in the garden that thought they were Orange-tips, feeding on the seed-heads of Garlic Mustard like their better-camouflaged counterparts. This year there were more of them.

Even though I prefer the Orange Tip and Green-veined White as favourites of the UK Whites, there is something majestic about the Large that is lacking in the other species, especially the males when fresh. Not sure whether this was a male or female, but it makes for a nice pic on purple loosestrife in our butterfly garden.

Easily the least numerous of the three 'common' whites this year. I only saw a handful in spring and not that many more later in the summer, although by then the warm weather was making them constantly active meaning that positive IDs of distant flying examples was not alway possible.

One of the few photos I took of this species was this one in my garden in late April.
Cheers,

Neil.

My first Large White of the year, on 27th March, was my best effort on the male side:
This nicely marked female showed up too on 10th September:

My favourite Large White photograph is of this mating pair. The partner on the right had antennae, legs and wing edges covered in pollen.


http://eastsussexwanderer.blogspot.co.uk

Large White

This year selecting my overall favourite for this species was relatively easy but not for a positive reason. Sometimes there are one or two shots that stand out head and shoulders above the rest or perhaps the shot was from a memorable trip…I didn’t see that many Large Whites this year possibly because there were plenty of times when there were whites passing by at a distance prohibitive to identification (?). This meant selecting my overall favourite was relatively easy for the unfortunate reason of a scant selection to choose from. I went with this one in the end as it came from an afternoon wander around, what we’d termed during 2020, our ‘Lockdown Park’. I’d not expected anything as there were only a few breaks in the cloud but in a little patch of untidy grass that had been left specifically for the wildlife I spotted a Small Copper, Brown Argus and Common Blue. There was also a Small and then this Large White – in a patch of a couple of metres square. It was brilliant to see that even the smallest space if left for nature gets utilised.
Have a goodun

Wurzel