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A Happy New Year to everyone, and let's hope a few sightings are made to take advantage of these abnormally benign 'winter' conditions...

I actually hope not to see a butterfly in January. We need them to remain dormant so they can save their energy for March, rather than waste it now on the futile hunt for nectar

Friends of mine visited Trelissick Gardens near Truro today and photographed a Painted Lady. This warm sunny spell here in Cornwall obviously brought it out of hibernation.

We have a huge greenhouse at the garden centre (no surprise there then) which now needs the yearly disinfecting and fumigation, I was so pleased to see the resident Red Admiral stretching its wings and having a little flap about on Monday 4/1. After some effort we managed to trap it and I put it outside by some fruiting Ivy, only for it to spiral up and away.

It really made my day as its' future hadn't looked too good up until then.

Spent a very frosty but sunny morning at Noar Hill this morning with half a dozen other Hants BC members to do a count of Brown Hairstreak eggs. One of the reserve volunteers had already marked a good number of eggs already so we concentrated on areas that hadn't already been surveyed and pleasingly found over a hundred eggs in two hours covering about half the reserve. Two highlights were six individual eggs on two adjacent branches, two doubles and best of all a treble Numbers of eggs showed a slightly green hue, rather than the normal brilliant white, presumably algae from the unseasonably mild weather to date. Also fond one pierces egg that had been predated.
Kind regards
Mark

It was -3.3C this morning, colder than for at least the last two winters. This afternoon at around half past two, in the Lower Gardens, Bournemouth, I decided to have a look in the rockery that catches the afternoon sun, thinking there might be a Red Admiral, as I had seen one nearby on 23 December. A butterfly soon hove into view, but to my surprise it proved to be a Small Tortoiseshell, my first winter sighting for many years. The maximum temperature was 6.6C

M.

Good sighting, Mikhail. With conditions set to warm up considerably over the next three days, I wouldn't be surprised to see more reports of butterflies on the wing (hopefully in south Wales too!)