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Small Heath - Favourite Photo of 2022

Week 16

So the weather remains cold – but hopefully this will yield positive results in terms of butterfly number when the season starts! To be honest it would be nice not to have to put on 15 layers before venturing out of the house!

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 very few small heath in 2022. Managed an unobstructed photo of this one on 27th June at grantown on spey.

I saw the Small Heath at Seasalter on the 2nd of June, I was pleased to see it not having seen it for a couple of years, hope fully I'll see them in better conditions this year they were hiding it seemed most of the time because of the heat Goldie

A small Heath from Sardinia this summer. Always amazed by the regional variations

Reasonable numbers as ever from my local patch before the heat kicked in. I find them not that difficult to approach if I wait until they land in an unobscured grass-free spot.However, I also amused myself trying to get inflight open-wing shots of some of the fresher ones as they wheeled around me.It is possible to work out the sex of these flying individuals because of the marked difference in abdomen shape.

Dave

Bertl wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 7:01 pmSeen very few small heath in 2022. Managed an unobstructed photo of this one on 27th June at grantown on spey.

Lovely image, Bertl. It's not often they pose so accommodatingly like that.

My favourite 2022 Small Heath photo is one of the first that I took of this species when I found a few flying at Sheldon Country Park near Birmingham airport in mid June.
After that I saw them at many other places that I visited although they didn't seem to have a particularly good year around my patch.

Cheers,

Neil

Small Heath did pretty well locally ,particularly on my old lockdown walk and in Orlestone , although they were well down at another hotspot .............Dungeness. I don,t normally take too many shots of them ,but did take more than usual this year ,these are my favourites.
Allan.W.

Andy02 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 8:46 pm A small Heath from Sardinia this summer. Always amazed by the regional variations

This is form/subspecies/species lyllus. Its taxonomic status is very confused but morphologically it is quite distinct, in the summer broods at least.

Guy

Padfield wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 7:31 pm

Andy02 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 8:46 pm A small Heath from Sardinia this summer. Always amazed by the regional variations

This is form/subspecies/species lyllus. Its taxonomic status is very confused but morphologically it is quite distinct, in the summer broods at least.

Guy

Thanks for the information Guy

Saw my first handful at Whiteford Burrows on the NW Gower coast on 8th May. Here's one of them:

A lovely backlit mating pair made a nice distraction on one of my many LTB hunts late last year

Small Heath

Both of my Favourite Shots for this species (I couldn’t decide between the two) came from Shipton Bellinger during Brostreak hunts. The first was early in August when the heat was really on! It was broiling and the path were bone dry, dusty and in places baked solid –it was like walking over fired pottery! In previous years when the temperatures have been on the warm side I’ve noticed that Small Heath will occasionally flick their wings open as they feed and I managed to find another example. Whether they’re trying to remove dust particles that are caught between their wings, wafting a breeze over their thorax to cool themselves or for some other as yet undiscovered reason it’s definitely something to look out for. Unfortunately this one was a little too far away and flicking a little too quickly for my Autofocus and Sports mode but it’s one of the better shots of this type that I’ve gotten hence its inclusion. The second came a few weeks later from along the main hedge. I’ve always had an eye for spotting variation in spotting in general. Over the years I’ve seen almost the whole spectrum from blind to eyes all over the place but this one was the first that I’ve seen with only ‘pupil’s staring out like little studs from the hind wings. Have a goodun

Wurzel

I took lots of photos of Small Heath in 2022 but this is the one I just have to include, as it is so rare to see this species with wings fully open. Even better that it was photographed in our butterfly garden, finally making a comeback after a ten year hiatus.

My favourite Small Heath photo from last year was taken on Lincoln's south common towards the end of August - a minor aberration, ab.biocellata - reasonably fresh and nicely marked.

The first time I have ever managed to take photos of Small Heath I am happy with - three photos of the same insect (with two different cameras). Marcilhac-sur-Célé, Lot, France, 18 September 2022.