www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Here is the opportunity to post your favourite photo(s) of a particular species taken in 2012 (or the last time you saw one!).

This is part of a series of topics which will grow over 20 weeks throughout the winter until all 59 UK species have been covered. The intention is to showcase three species per week (in alphabetical order), so please wait until a topic has been opened by me for a particular species before posting photos. Our overseas friends are very welcome to fill in the obvious gaps relating to rare UK migrants.

Details of locations, dates, times and circumstances would be welcome and please feel free to contribute observations of behaviour, stories of personal encounters, anecdotes or other interesting points.

Vince

Plaistow, 14 August 2012

A magical moment ...

I'll kick this off with an image that could quite easily have been my favourite of the year ...

I captured this female whilst she was on an egg laying sortie at Steyning, she seems to be struggling to get a good perch.
Neil is just out of frame left.

Lovely shot Phil. She appears to be almost struggling with that heavy load of eggs. You did better than I did with this specimen.
BWs, Neil

After not finding Brown Haristreak at Shipton Bellinger I headed back on the Sunday with my older daughter and had much more success. In fact it couldn't have been more different. The previous day we'd seen no-one at the site, searched far and wide with no sigthings, yet on Sunday we hardy had to look to find Brostreaks and there was an almost party feel we people pointing them out. Indeed as we approached the hedge at the back of the site we bumped into Pauline who put us straight onto a flamestreak .The female was quite high up in the bushes but as a fair number of people had been viewing it a path had been cleared amongst the brambles. She hung around for about another half an hour before fluttering (the Brostreak, not Pauline ) up higher and leaving us to have another look along the hedge. Where we found a male or two. A later look on a different group of Brambles saw both a male and female on the same thistle head and this was where I took seeral of my favourite Brostreak shots. Somehow I managed to whittle it down to two, and I only include the second as it seemed to go down well with others at the time Have a goodun

Wurzel

Excellent photos Mark, Phil and Wurzel.

The photo below was taken at Grafton Wood on a day when I saw about half a dozen Brown Hairstreaks, I am not entirely happy with it but it is the best one I have managed this year. I was happier with some photos that I took of the only BH that I saw last year at Bernwood, but then again that may have been because It was the only one.
Cheers,

Neil F.

After seeing those wonderful photographs you guys have taken of one of my favourite butterflies, the Brown Hairstreak, I thought I would I would post a few of my own. I suppose I like the one on top of the blackberry the best, but was also lucky to get a shot of a male with its wings half open, but this was taken quickly, as the butterfly was gone in seconds. I got lucky at Shipton Bellinger, finding males early in August and a female later in the month. I also visited Bernwood Forest on several occasions and during my last visit I found a pristine female above head height in a sloe bush. Kind Regards Peter.