Brown Argus

It will be interesting to see what this years Big Butterfly Count comes up with. My own experience is that the butterflies are there, but they are in much lower numbers than I have seen before. Some, such as Tortoiseshells and Commas, have been few and far between this year.

Two weeks ago I was walking through meadows and on chalk hillsides covered in wild flowers and I was having difficulty finding any butterflies. Then in the past week or so, things have started to improve. We had a good emergence of Chalkhill Blues, then, in the last few days, Brimstone, Peacock, Painted Lady, and Red Admirals all in good condition and in good numbers.

One walk along a ride in Houghton Forest really raised my spirits. There were hundreds of these freshly emerged butterflies and even a good number of slightly worn Silver-washed Fritillaries. It was just like old times again.

With this years butterfly season drawing to a close I am just keeping my fingers crossed for a recovery in numbers next year.

Brown Argus - Newtimber Hill

A quick trip back to Newtimber Hill gave me a few good finds. This Brown Argus took a bit of chasing but I eventually got the pictures I wanted.

Brown Argus - Newtimber Hill

It is always easier to get the pictures when the butterflies are otherwise engaged and this pair of mating Silver-spotted Skippers was no exception.

Mating Pair Silver-spotted Skippers - Newtimber Hill

Another unusual sight was this pair of Painted Ladies. I have only ever seen them as singletons before. I assume they are male and female. They were sticking very close together but I did not get any action shots. I also noticed that the top one has an extra white spot in the wing tip. Possibly an aberration.

Painted Ladies  - Newtimber Hill

Peacock   -  nice but it looked much more vivid in real life.

Wall - Newtimber Hill

Brimstone - Houghton Forest

Brimstone  -  Houghton Forest

Another great butterfly. A blue version of the normally brown female of the Common Blue butterfly. You might need to read that twice!

Common Blue Female

Common Blue Female

A walk around Tillets Fields gave us plenty of Purple Hairstreaks but as with my previous visit they stayed mostly in the tops of the trees. Fortunately one did drop out of the skies at our feet. It was a bit tatty but still worth recording.

Purple Hairstreak  - Tillets Fields

Dave also spotted a Brown Haistreak at Tillets but unfortunately it was gone by the time I got there.

Red Admiral  -  Houghton Forest

Red Admiral -  Houghton Forest

Speckled Wood  -  Madgeland Woods

Houghton Forest also had the largest number of Dragonflies that I have seen in one small location. I reckon around 40 in the area where we park the car although they weren't exactly lining up to be counted. They looked like Darters and Hawkers but none were landing to enable a definite identification. We also saw large numbers of Southern Hawkers at Madgeland Woods and these were a bit more obliging.

Southern Hawker

Southern Hawker

I am missing a few of my usual butterflies this year, White Admiral, Purple Emperor, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, White Hairstreak, plus all the northern species but overall it has been a good year. There is also still a chance of connecting with Brown Hairstreaks and Clouded Yellows before the month is out and maybe even a late Long-tailed Blue so I need to keep looking.

Croatia

I have just returned from a weeks holiday touring around Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was not a birding or butterflying holiday but I did have expectations of getting some time out and finding a few interesting specimens. The region contains a good range of different environments and there is no intensive farming so I had seen reports of organised trips coming back with 140+ butterflies, 90+ birds, and 50 + moths, all recorded in a week. I was staying on the drier and less productive Adriatic coast but I would have been happy to settle for just a fraction of these numbers.

There was one problem - the temperature. I had been expecting it to be around 28°C. It was actually over 40°C nearly every day, peaking at 43°C in the shade when we visited Mostar. For me this is cold beer and air conditioned room time. There were supposed to be Rock Partridges on the hill behind our hotel but it was a 700m climb. I am keen but even before sunrise it was distinctly uncomfortable, by midday the climb would probably be life threatening.

The birds and butterflies also seemed to be in short supply in the heat. There were plenty of Swifts, Swallows, and House Martins around at dawn and dusk and more House Sparrows than I had expected but very little else. I did manage to scrape a few shots together over the week but it was all a little disappointing.

Spotted Fritillary

Spotted Fritillary

This Spotted Fritillary was a good find but it didn't hang around for long and most other butterflies were in poor condition. This Scarce Swallowtail was worth the chase although it has seen better days.

Scarce Swallowtail - missing a few bits.

The next two pictures are of the same butterfly. My first thoughts were a Cleopatra which would be a new species for me but then when I photographed the other side, in slightly different lighting conditions, it looks more like a Brimstone. For my first sighting I want to be sure so I think, this time, I will have to settle for a Brimstone.

Cleopatra or Brimstone

See comment from Spock below - it looks as though it was a Cleopatra. I am always happy to get feedback, especially when it gives me a new species.

The best place I saw for butterflies was a little meadow around the border post between Croatia and Montenegro. For some reason there seemed to be dozens of them flying there, mostly around the large sign that said strictly no photographs.


There were a few day flying moths in evidence. The first one below I have not been able to identify yet, the second is a four-spotted Footman. I hate to think of the hours I spend searching the web and various books trying to make these moth identifications.

Moth - not identified yet

Four spotted Footman

We only got close enough to one Dragonfly to be able to get pictures, that was the Southern Skimmer. There were good numbers of these around the fountain in the arboretum at Trsteno.

Southern Skimmer

Southern Skimmers in mating-wheel

Southern Skimmer

The last day of the holiday was the only time that I really saw any birds. It started hot and I decided to leave the telephoto lens at the hotel. I had carried it around all week without using it. I wanted to reduce the weight I was carrying and the heat haze was rendering it almost useless. It cooled down a bit during the day and the birds started to appear. Either that or I was starting to look a bit harder. All the following birds were taken with a 100mm macro lens. Not ideal for bird photography but at least a chance to practice the field skills in getting a bit closer.

Not 100% sure on this one. I think it is probably a female Blue Rock Thrush

Turtle Dove

Red-backed Shrike

Lots of insects about in the heat, I have the bites to prove it. Two interesting ones are shown below. The first is a Carpenter Bee. So called as it burrows into wood to create its nest. The picture does not give any idea of scale but these are twice the size of a Bumble Bee. Bees are usually hard to photograph. They seem to vibrate all the time and it is difficult to get a sharp picture. This one though seems less prone to movement making a sharp picture possible.

Carpenter Bee

Another insect that vibrates a lot, or at least makes a lot of noise are the Cicadas. They are hard to spot on the trees but they are everywhere. As soon as the first rays of sunlight come over the horizon and the temperature starts to rise the noise starts up and it stays with you until late in the evening. For me it is all part of the Mediterranean experience.

Cicadas

And one final good news story. These Barn Swallows got too big for their nest and their weight caused it to collapse. A local worker found them and not sure what to do he put the remains of the nest and the chicks into his safety helmet and hung it on the wall. Everyone is happy. The mother flies in about every sixty seconds with food for them. The chicks have a wonderful view of all the tourists and the tourists have a nice picture to take home. I would think that the worker is also quite proud of the little family that he saved.

Re-housed Barn Swallows

I think I just got unlucky with the week we chose and the unusually high temperatures. The countryside looks ideal for a birding or butterflying holiday and I would like to give it another go - but I will probably try June next time.

Brown Hairstreak

Today I picked up what will probably be my last butterfly species of the year the Brown Hairstreak. Reports from Steyning Rifle Range were a bit patchy and we had already spent a couple of hours there without success so I decided to play safe and visit Alners Gorse in Dorset where Dave had seen White, Purple and Brown Hairstreaks on a visit a couple of weeks earlier.

The site looks great and we did get to see Browns and Purples even if they were not in the best of condition so this is a place I will be coming back to next year.

The weather was patchy cloud cover with a few showers and there was no sign of the Browns during the morning. We did see a few Purple Hairstreaks but they were in a very poor state. So much so that Dave had difficulty convincing me that the first one we saw was actually a purple and not the brown I was looking for.

Purple Hairstreak - it has an eye marking on the underside of its wing.

I did get a slightly better record shot later on, it shows a trace of purple and the eye marking is visible. I would have liked better but I will have to settle for this for now.

Purple Hairstreak

We saw three female Browns in the early afternoon of which two settled with open wings whilst the third just kept going into the distance. One of the two that settled flew off almost immediately, the other walked into the depths of the Blackthorn, possibly to lay an egg, then that one flew off as well, so no closed wing shots.

Female Brown Hairstreak

It was a two hundred mile round trip but we had seen the butterflies and I was happy. Although I have to confess that a message from Dawn and Jim, saying that there were a number of Brown Hairstreaks showing well at the Steyning site, just a few miles from home, did take the shine off the day just a bit. Click here to see what I missed.


The supporting cast on the day was quiet good. These are a few of the less tired looking ones.

Magpie Moth

Small Copper

Common Blue

Female Common Blue

Brimstone

I have't put the macro lens away yet. I have seen all the target butterflies but there is still the possibility of improving on a few of the record shots and who knows there might still be a Swallowtail, Long-tailed Blue, or Queen of Spain to come yet.

Glanville Fritillary

The Glanville Fritillary is named after Eleanor Glanville, an ecentric 17th and 18th century English butterfly enthuisiast - a very unusual occupation for a woman at that time. She was the first to capture British specimens in Lincolnshire during the 1690s. A contemporary wrote:-

This fly is named for Eleanor Glanvil, whose memory had like to have suffered for her curiosity. Some relations that was disappointed by her Will, attempted to let it aside by Acts of Lunacy, for they suggested that none but those who were deprived of their senses, would go in pursuit of butterflies.           Moses Harris 1776

Wikipedia        

The population has shrunk a little since those days. Now the only reliable place to see them is on the south coast of the Isle of Wight. There have been small colonies reported on the mainland at Hurst Castle, Wrecclesham in Surrey, and in the Avon Gorge but I have not seen any reports of these so far this year. That leaves Hutchinson's Bank near Croydon as the only reported sightings on the mainland. These are probably the result of a relocated population by a member of the public from the Wrecclesham site.

Hutchinson's Bank is certainly a promising butterflying location with 29 reported species. I searched it for a couple of hours today but only managed to come up with one Glanville and I only had that for about 30 seconds. I was momentarily distracted by a Jay flying through and when I turned back it was gone never to be found again. The second I took my eyes off it I knew I had made a mistake but it was too late. Fortunately the 30 seconds was long enough to get a couple of record shots.

Glanville Fritillary (Female)

Glanville Fritillary

Strange to think that if I could only find this one butterfly it may well have been the only one of its kind flying in mainland UK today.

Hutchinson's bank also yielded a number of Common Blue and Speckled Wood, two Small Heath, two Dingy Skippers, one Small Blue, one Peacock, and dozens of Brimstones. There seems to be large numbers of Brimstones at every site I visit.

Brimstone

Common Blue

Common Blue

Speckled Wood

I also stopped off at Mill Hill NR to look for the Adonis Blue. The photographs never seem to reproduce the vivid colours you see on the Adonis in the field.

Adonis Blue

Adonis Blue female

Green Hairstreak

Small Heath

Still no sign of the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary in Sussex