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Having observed a large colony of these butterflies in my local cemetery over the last few years, it has become apparent that I have seen numbers of them on and around a particular large laurel bush about 20 feet (c. 6.5 metres for younger readers...) high, whilst there were none or very few elsewhere when I searched around . Last year I also observed a pair spiralling-up at least 50 feet together, whilst other males continued their aerial sparring above the bush, landing on the top and darting out to challenge all-comers. It made me wonder whether this bush is their equivalent of a "master-tree", where males congregate and females are courted? Has anyone else seen this sort of behaviour with this species, or have I just seen some isolated occurrences and tried to make too much of it?
Answers, on a postcard.....

Nick

Hi Nick,

While I am not going to dispute for one moment your 'master tree' theory, it's worth mentioning that laurel has been recorded as a larval food plant of this species (well, the developing fruits in any case). Certainly cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) has been recorded as a host plant, could this be the species of laurel in your local cemetary?

It might be worth staking out to see if one of the resons that it is proving so attractive to the hollybaloos is that the population is using it as an ovipisition site for at least half of the season...

Felix.

nickb wrote:20 feet (c. 6.5 metres for younger readers...)

Don't get sucked into this metric nonsense Nick, it's just a trendy fad...

Thanks, Felix; I didn't know that as I have not seen it reported elsewhere, but it does make some sense. The bush.... Today, no more than 3 HB seen on that bush in the Cemetery again, - all males - but the tatty one I saw yesterday is still there; none seen elsewhere.....
I have not seen females ovipositing on the bush (but I haven't really looked either) so I will do so for the first-brood females; I would expect the mature berries would not be used by the 2nd brood? I have only observed them ovipositing on their two acknowledged food-plants in the Cemetery - of which there is plenty - so far. Elsewhere I have seen first-brood Holly Blue egg-laying on Hairs Foot Clover (or similar, I wasn't sure) which was a bit of a surprise and I could find no references in the literature to this either.
Isn't this why we love butterflies; continually posing questions of our knowledge of them!
N
(My physics teacher used to deal in distances in terms of a gnat's cock! Which, as he put it, is incredibly tiny and of little consequence, except to a female gnat.....
I expect he's been forced to go metric now )