Brown Hairstreaks

 

Out walking on the Downs recently, there were still a lot of butterflies on the wing but most were starting to look a bit worn. There will still be fresh looking Red Admirals, Peacocks and Brimstones around for a few months yet and possibly even a Short-tailed Blue but the end of the butterflying season is usually marked by the emergence of the Brown Hairstreaks. When most other species are past their best the flash of bright orange stands out amongst the drab browns - that is, if you manage to find one.

Fortunately we have a couple of good sites close by and this year we headed over to Steyning Rifle Range in search of the target. Target butterfly that is, no shots have been fired here since the 1980s.

I would like to say what a wonderful day we had but Brown Hairstreaks always seem like hard work. We arrived early and spent two to three hours searching for that flash of orange. A complete waste of time. Males tend to stay on territory in the tops of the Ash trees, whilst the females coming down to the Blackthorn to lay eggs don't usually appear until after 11am. If you are really lucky you may find one sunbathing or nectaring on Brambles or Fleabane after egg laying.

We did eventually get to see a couple and it was worth the wait but only just.

It has been an unusual butterflying year. We had a shortage of the blue species early in the year. It did improve a bit late summer but they were still not in the numbers I would expect, yet walking on the downs now there seems to be good numbers of second broods.

Plants also seem to be out of sync with the butterflies. We usually visit Houghton Forest in August to photograph Silver-spotted Skippers and White Admirals on the Hemp Agrimony. Not only is it a great nectaring plant but it is four or five feet tall so you don't have to go crawling about on your hands an knees to get your shots. This year it flowered late, it looks good now but the shots are not really what I was looking for.

Hemp Agrimony looking good but I can't say the same for the Silver-washed Fritillary

Or for the White Admiral

Fortunately the Small Tortoiseshells are still looking good.

Small Tortoiseshell

The Buddleia in my garden at home also seems to be having a bad year. It flowered at about the right time  but it doesn't seem to be attracting the butterflies this year. Perhaps nectar levels are linked to temperature and moisture levels.

A late push has eventually raised my butterfly list for the year to more respectable levels. There are forty seven butterflies that can be seen in Sussex in a good year. I missed out on the Purple Emperor and Purple Hairstreak and the jury is still out on the Long-tailed Blue which could be flying through to the end of October. Still forty four is not a bad count and if the Large Tortoiseshell becomes established in Sussex I could be looking for forty eight next year.

Below are some of the late additions to the list.

Brimstone

Brown Argus

Clouded Yellow - it's a bit tatty but they all count

Common Blue

Silver-spotted Skipper

Small Copper

Speckled Wood

Wall

It doesn't seem possible that the summer is all but over. Did it ever really happen this year or is it just that I was isolating through the best part of it. 

It will still be worth looking for moths for a couple more months and we could get a warm September which will keep the insects active but the focus will now start to turn back to the birds. Which is only appropriate for what claims to be a birding blog. Bring on those winter days stood on the North Wall at Pagham waiting for that once in a lifetime find to turn up.

Long-tailed Blue

With an influx of Long-tailed Blue butterflies being reported along the south coast we headed over to Whitehawk Hill to search for them. The best information we had was somewhere around the transmitter tower, so the plan was for a search for the food plant, everlasting pea Lathyrus latifolius, and then to stake it out and wait to see what turned up.

In practice it turned out to be a lot easier than that, as there were already two people searching the target area when we arrived.

We had a number of sightings with a maximum of two in the air at any one time so probably somewhere around four to six being present. They seemed to be based over the fence in the allotments and where making occasional forays out into the scrub area looking for Everlasting Pea. Their presence in the allotments could well herald a problem for the gardeners pea crops in a few weeks time.

My photographs are both of the same specimen and show a hole in the  under wing where the eye spot should be. It looks as though the combination of eye spots and short wispy tails has served its purpose and fooled a bird into attacking the wrong end of the butterfly.

The last influx of the Long-tailed Blue was in 2015 and that year the eggs laid by the migrants resulted in fresh UK born butterflies on the wing at the end of October. My blog of the 25th October of that year shows a freshly emerged individual. These are the pictures you really want rather than the slightly worn individual above.

They are said to not be able to survive the winters in this country in any stage of their life cycle but who knows, with global warming that may change. Great for butterfly fans but not so good for gardeners or farmers as they are considered a pest on the continent.



Having found our target species early on we then headed over to Steyning to have another look for the Brown Hairstreaks. This must be the most frustrating of all the Hairstreak family but at least this time we managed to see a few and get a couple of record shots.

Still not the pictures I really want but I will get them eventually. It's good to have a challenge in life, it's just a pity that you have to take it on when it is over 30 degrees out in the sun.

Pulborough Brooks Brown Hairstreak

A disappointing days birding. The promised brighter skies did not turn up and neither did the birds. It was one of those dull, overcast and oppressive days, not good for photography and very little bird song, the birds don't seem to like them either.

We started off at Waltham Brooks with good views of Willchaffs and Lesser Whitethroats. None close enough or still long enough for a good photograph but a promising start. We gave the ducks a once over but obviously missed the Garganeys that Alan Kitson saw around the same time. I would probably struggle to spot the difference between female Garganey and Teal but I hope I did not miss a male.

We had one heart stopping moment when a buzzard flew towards us from the south. In flight it had a profile with very flat wings and the call sounded unusual. Could it be a Honey Buzzard? It looked a possibility but we will never know as did not come close enough to confirm the distinguishing features.

The sewage works gave us distant views of Grey Wagtails but again the picture opportunities were limited.

Grey Wagtail

At about 11.30 we headed off to Pulborough Brooks which was surprisingly empty of both birds and bird watchers. I had thought that with the the previous couple of day's crowds searching for the Broad-billed Sandpiper there would still be a hangover of people. It wasn't the reason we had gone there but perhaps we would be lucky, miss the crowds and get the bird. No such luck, more Willchaffs and Whitethroats, distant views of Common Sandpiper, Greenshank, and Mandarin Ducks but nothing unusual.

It was left to the butterflies and dragonflies to rescue the day again. We missed the real prize a very large Brown Hawker that kept threatening to put down but eventually flew off. the consolation prize was that in chasing it we came across a couple of Comma Butterflies. Nothing unusual in that except that one of them looks like it may be an aberration, probably ab. carbonaria. I know that overwintering Commas do have a darker underwing but this looks exceptional.

Comma - It looks normal from the top view

but it has a very dark underwing

At least the dark colours show off the white comma which gives this butterfly it name. It's strange how the more you get into butterflies the more you find there is to see and learn.

As we headed down towards Nettleys hide we passed under some Ash trees with Buckthorn growing underneath them. Dave commented that it should be a good place for Brown Hairstreaks but neither of us was really looking. I stopped to photograph a Scorpion Fly that disappeared before I could get the macro lens out but when I turned around there was a female Brown Hairstreak resting on some bracken. A soft approach through the bracken was not really possible and I did eventually flush it back up into the trees but at least I got a record shot.

Female Brown Hairstreak

So another attempt to get back to birding that ended up focusing on Butterflies. Things should improve over the next few weeks as the migration start to take hold and the waders begin to return.

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.