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Chequered Skipper - Favourite Photo of 2016

Week 3 - Apologies if this is earlier than expected, tomorrow I'm visiting family and so won't be able to post at the normal time...

The third week and the third opportunity to showcase your favourite shots of 2016! Please could I ask that everyone waits until a topic has been opened by me for a particular species before posting photos - just to make it easier to organise and keep everything on track so that we can enjoy this throughout the winter months? Of course our overseas members are very welcome to fill in the obvious gaps relating to rare UK migrants. As like last year 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

Not sure I need to submit anything here, since most of my photos are in the latest Dispar article

But if I had to choose - this would be my favourite; the first "coloured up" Chequered Skipper pupa I've ever seen, and something that I'd dreamt of for almost a decade
Cheers,

- Pete

Wow. No wonder you dreamt of it. Amazing camouflage.

Previous years the first week of June has been good for Chequered Skippers. Scotland had a lovely warm Spring (unlike the rest of us) so this year we were a bit too late to find any in pristine condition. As we drove up to Glen Loy we passed Glen Etive when Phil suddenly changed the plan 'Shall we look there''? Not knowing where to find them we took a chance and after a bit of time settled on a likely place. I wouldn't say they were abundant but yes they were there so a change of plan is not always a bad idea. The next day was spent in Glen Loy with Fellow UKB Neil Freeman once again missing Pete. I stood next to him once at Fermyn, totally unaware

Over the past few years I had managed to see 57 species of butterfly in the UK with just the Chequered Skipper remaining out of the mainland British species. During the long dark nights of last winter I did a lot of reading up and made my plans to try and rectify that this year. So it was that for a number of reasons I settled on the first week of June and booked a B&B in Fort William to spend a few days looking around the surrounding area.
After a couple of days in the Arnside/Silverdale area on the way up we carried on to Scotland and stopped off for brief look at Glasdrum Wood. Given the weather that we had encountered so far and after seeing that western Scotland had already enjoyed a warm spring I was beginning to be a little concerned that we had left it a bit late, an impression that was reinforced when I quickly found my first Chequered Skippers at Glasdrum which were looking past their best.
The following morning we went to Glen Loy and after finding a couple of faded males in different spots along the river we bumped into UKB members Phil and Rosalyn who showed us to another spot further along the glen were we found some more males and a couple of females in slightly better condition.
Over the next couple of days we also visited the Alt Mhuic reserve on the shore of Loch Arkaig where I found another couple of faded males and also had a look at a couple of likely looking spots in Glen Nevis but without success.
I also returned to Glen Loy a couple of times as it was just a short drive from where we were staying and seemed to be the best site so far. The day after we had met Phil and Rosalyn I returned to Glen Loy in the afternoon and wandered a bit further long the bank of the river and found some Chequered Skippers in better condition. I was also tempted to return the following morning which was when we met Pete Eeles and Mark Colvin on their tour of Chequered Skippers sites which has culminated in Petes excellent article on this species http://www.dispar.org/reference.php?id=119

A few favourites from the many photos that I took...
...including this female with increased forewing markings.
Cheers,

Neil

One of the few species I spent any time with this year...here's a Chequered Skipper from Glasdrum Wood in May
It chucked it down with rain ALL morning on that long drive up...yet when I arrived it stopped for an hour or two!

I made the long trip to Scotland to see the last of the mainland species - fantastic scenery and the weather was fabulous and the butterflies also came to the ball
Kind Regards
Mark