www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I went to Denbies on Sunday and Monday evenings. There are really good numbers of chalkhill blues there at the moment and I assume that the numbers will have continued to grow over the past few days.

When I was there on Monday I checked possibly a couple of hundred chalkhills and only found one ab. I am wondering if, because of the really hot weather we've had this week, any more recent emergees will be likely to be abs or if it takes longer than four or five days of hot weather to cause this.

My plea to any visitors to the site is can they keep a look out as I would love to know if this is the case and I cannot get there before next Tuesday now.

Thanks.

Susie,

I posted a couple of photos of abs taken today in a separate thread before spotting this request! Sorry... No idea how to reconcile the threads

Dave

Denbies sounds like an amazing place. I would love to visit it some day, but it is rather a long way away for a day trip for me. I would love to see some Chalkhill Blues, or many other species of blues.
Whenever I hear someone mentioning going to Denbies it sounds to me like they are talking about a shop!!

It is a lovely spot. You really need to go several times a year, too, to see all it has to offer. I believe 35 different species have been seen here.

Dave

Hi Dave,

Apologies for the delay in replying to your post.

I am fairly certain that my theory is correct. I think that hot spell of weather we had just over a week ago "cooked" a fair few chalkhill blue pupae and as a result there are plenty of aberrations knocking around on Denbies now.

Two weeks ago when I looked, and I checked a lot of butterflies, I couldn't find one but today there were plenty.

Lee Hurrell found this first one but I am not sure if it is a result of the hot weather or if the crescent shape is formed by a trait which is passed on.