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Marbled White - Favourite Photo of 2016

Week 10

Week 10 and the Wurzel Christmas is now starting to move at a pace, the house is decorated and the Tree is up. However it has brought home to me the fact that I am suffering butterfly withdrawl symptoms as when I look at the silver bows on the tree I just see open wing underside views of Purple Hairstreaks

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

I succeeded in getting a reasonable photo of a mating pair this year - strangely such a beast has eluded me until now. It really shows the clear difference between the sexes, something I was able to demonstrate to my eleven-year-old, who had just been asking. This is from Box Hill, on a windy 2nd July, when there were many flying with reasonable numbers of Dark Green Fritillaries. They make a great combination, and at the peak of their season here, many hundreds of Marbled Whites can be seen. Dave

A simple context shot gets my choice this year, 'floating' in a sea of Timothy!

Nice photos Dave and Paul.
Female on the left, Dave ?


Hi Folks,
Here is my contribution for this species from France, from the Alpes de Haute Provence, in July.
We were on holiday in Chorges.
This individual came to an unfortunate end with an encounter with a crab spider. I was too late to save it: Male: Female: Cheers, Chris

Almost missed out on this species back home in 2016....until I saw a solitary (and worn) individual on 30th July on the north Gower coast:

The first Marbled Whites I saw in 2016 were in early July at my local spot of Castle Hills near Solihull where numbers have been steadily increasing year on year after first appearing there a few years ago. This meant that this was one species that bucked the general trend of lower numbers locally this season.
I also like this underside view taken at Ryton Wood Meadows on a dull and cloudy day,
Cheers,

Neil

Most Marbled Whites that I found this season,were in the Wye area ,Kent on the downs,where there were very good numbers.As seems to be usual for this species ,a lot of the specimens were infested with parasitic red mites (Trombidium Breei ),I have seen them on other species ie; Meadow Brown ,Large Skipper and Gatekeeper
but they seem to be quite common on Marbled Whites.]

Here's a shot from Empingham - which some of you may be familiar with, as it is one of the villages adjacent to Rutland Water (where they have the annual Birdfair-thingy-whateverit'scalled).

Anyhoo, some fellow on Flickr went to great pains to point out that it's the aberrant form ab. zobeli which I'm more than happy to take his word for, 'cos,
a) there are an awful lot of described and named aberrant Marbled White forms, and,
b) I'm not really interested in that sort of thing.

Marbled White

This was taken on 25th June at my Larkhill stop-off. It’s my favourite because it was the first Marbled White for the year for me and also because it was so exquisitely fresh. I don’t think that I had that good a year for Marbled Whites – there were plenty around but I didn’t get anywhere near as many shots as in previous years – perhaps a case of familiarity breeding contempt? I must do better by this species next year.
Have a goodun

Wurzel

I found this nice, crisply-marked and undamaged specimen in Bernwood, Oxon.:
Mike