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Purple Hairstreak - Favourite Photo 2016

Week 13

Happy New Year! Hopefully it will a much better one for butterflies than 2016...

I'm looking forward to seeing these shots as despite seeing at fair few myself this year I was unable to get any photographs - no joggers to blame this time just the butterflies behaviour

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

Unlike last year I only managed a couple of distant record shots of a live animal this year but whilst searching for their Black cousins at Monks Wood I did find a dead female stuck in a spiders web on a blade of grass.

I spent a few early mornings in 2016 watching Purple Hairstreaks come down to ground level and these two females are my favourites.

Getting a reasonable upperside shot of this species from nearer than 30 metres away is still an unfulfilled ambition. At Black Park in Buckinghamshire on 3rd July I disturbed an individual from near the ground, only to watch it fly up to a spot directly above me and tantalisingly too high to get any kind of shot except from below... and through the leaf. Close - but no banana. Dave

Again on the same day has I took shots of the PE in Ferymn Woods 17th July, I was lucky enough to get shots of this beautiful Purple Hair Streak that the people surrounding it said had not long been out, also on my way back I got a shot of a second one, what a great day that was, I'm certainly hoping to go back to Ferymn this year. Goldie

Apologies for the lateness of post... Christmas and all that...

Again, I'm resorting to posting pics taken in France. This rather battered individual descended each morning to the gravel driveway of the gîte where I was staying in Dordogne in mid-September.

I only saw this species on two occasions in 2016, both whilst at the Brown Hairstreak site in Pembrokeshire. As ever, images were nigh impossible as the insects remained perched in the trees: