Black-tailed Skimmer

Apart from Thursday's trip to Ham Wall the past week has mostly seen me venturing out between showers to visit local butterfly and dragonfly sites. Returns have been poor, with numbers of both appearing to be down this year, and with clouds and cooler weather resulting in occasions when nothing much has been flying.

In previous years one of the ponds in Angmering has been good for Black-tailed Skimmers and Red-eyed Damselflies. My first visit coincided with a sudden cloud burst so I found nothing  but on the second visit a few Black-tailed were flying.

They usually favour putting down on the mud so, as below, it is not easy to get a good picture.

However, as the temperature goes above twenty five degrees they start to settle on low vegetation. I don't think we actually reached that on my second visit but I did find an obliging specimen and the pictures are in a different class.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any Red-eyed Damselflies despite seeing large numbers there in previous years. The pond now has a few very large fish although I doubt that these could have wiped out the colony completely.

Other Dragonflies seen. The one below is a bit confusing. It has yellow stripes down the legs so it is a Common Darter but I think it must be a freshly emerged male. The wings look pristine and the pterostigma are still white rather than the dark brown of a mature specimen. Picture taken at the Angmering Pond.

The next one is a Ruddy Darter (no yellow lines down the legs) and a much deeper colour than the specimen in one of last weeks blogs. This one taken at Woods Mills.

Early Commas have over wintered and usually look a bit tatty so these will be first brood having emerged early July. The closed wing shot showing the white comma that gives them their name.

Plenty of Skippers around. This one looks like an Essex.

The next a female Large

Male Large - note the large sex brands on the wings

Meadow Browns everywhere. This one a female

my first Gatekeeper of the year

Silver-washed Fritillaries in Madgeland Wood although no sign of the Purple Emperors. 

I also spent an hour or so watching Purple Hairstreaks in the top of a large oak tree at Tillets Lane Fields. No chance of a picture and this still remains on the top of my target list.

White-letter Hairstreak

The trip to Scotland had revived my interest in Butterflies and with a warm sunny afternoon promised I picked Dave up and we headed over to Holingbury Park to look for the White-letter Hairstreaks. We had seen a few there in previous years and they seem to be more inclined to come down and nectar on the brambles and thistles than at other sites we have visited.

White-letter Hairstreak

Conditions were good for taking photographs but I could still have done with a bit more light and a bit less wind. Its just a bit annoying when the wind blows and the butterfly drifts out of focus and often out of the frame, just as you are about to press the shutter.

Still, there were some good opportunities on offer today.

Male White-letter Hairstreak

Most of the pictures here today are of females. The female being best identified by having longer tails than the males.

Photobomed by a fly - which usually results in the butterfly taking flight

The White-letter Hairstreak spends most of its time in the tops of trees feeding on honeydew. Often you can see them flying but they will not come down. However, if you do get them at ground level they are an easy butterfly to photograph. They will stay on the same flower nectaring for long periods, often an hour or more, and they are not easily spooked by people or by large cameras being positioned only a few inches from them.

The butterfly always settles with its wings closed so there are no open wing shots.

The caterpillars feed exclusively on the leaves of Elm trees and the population suffered a major setback when Dutch Elm disease wiped out most of the Elms in this country. However, it seems to be making a comeback and is gradually extending its range.

There were a few other butterflies about but none of them were in particularly good condition. This Comma seemed worth recording

Comma

Comma

and these Harlequin Ladybird Larvae were amongst hundreds feeding on blackfly that had infested this Burdock plant.

Harlequin Ladybird Larvae

I think I see a new challenge here. I will have to photograph the larvae of all the different Ladybirds we have in this country.

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.

Meadow Brown Aberration

A trip up to Tillets Lane Fields on Monday gave me Purple Hairstreaks and Essex Skippers taking me over my target of forty species for the year. I am a couple of days behind my butterflying buddy Dave but catching up fast. We are now thinking of a final year total more in the range of forty five to forty eight.

The butterflying this year has been great fun and helps occupy those summer days when the birding is slow. I was wondering what to do once I had seen all the British butterflies - or at least all of those within easy reach of Sussex. I now have the answer - aberrations. We came across this Meadow Brown aberration in Tillets Fields.

Meadow Brown aberration  Albino - See note at end of blog

Reading up on aberrations there are about twenty six recognised aberrations for the Meadow Brown alone. We thought initially that this was ab. Cinerea but on further investigation it looks more like a cross between ab. cinerea and ab. radiata. Anyway next summer I will be out hunting aberrations, it looks far more challenging than plain ordinary butterflies.

Having said that we did not have much luck with the Purple Hairstreaks. We could see them flying at the top of the tree but they were not coming down. This, along with the White-letter Hairstreaks, now gives us two butterflies that we have seen but have been unable to get record shots for. On the positive side I did see my first Essex Skippers and a first Gatekeeper for the year at the Tillets Lane site.

Gatekeeper

Silver-washed Fritillary

and the site also has a number of moths

Swallow-tailed Moth

Tuesday and we decided on a visit to Botany Bay Wood to look for the Purple Emperors. As we arrived at the triangle there was one on the ground with a couple of people taking photographs. The Emerors seem indifferent to people being close to them but to me it brings back all the negative feelings of a twitch. Too many people and not enough connection to the nature you came to see. However, that did not stop me grabbing a couple of pictures before we moved on looking for our "own" butterfly.

We eventually saw three or possibly four Purple Emperors on the ground. None of my shots contain that purple sheen that you are always looking for. In fact looked at in isolation they look more like the duller brown colouring of the female. However, it is very unlikely that the female would be down on the ground so we must have just been unlucky with the lighting.

It was nice to meet up with Colin Baker. Its good to talk to the experts, you learn a lot from them. Have a look at his website  "Lepi-photos".

Purple Emperor

Closed wing shot

Purple Emperor

Looks so much nicer against the green background

Ringlets are everywhere at the moment but this couple in particular seemed worth recording

Ringlets mating

and this Comma recorded a couple of days ago seemed worth adding to the blog. The paler orange suggest that this is of the form hutchinsoni the result of long periods of sunlight on the caterpillars from the spring hatchings.

Comma hutchinsoni

The sun is shinning outside. Do I do a few jobs around the house, do I go out birding, or do I go out butterflying. Difficult decisions to be made, that is between at least two of the options.


Note

Subsequent information (extracts below) from Colin Pratt, County Recorder suggests that the Meadow Brown is probably an albino rather than an abberation. and as such is probably even rarer. Can't be bad!

"Have consulted the leading man on butterfly varieties (Rupert Barrington) and your Meadow Brown is probably an albino (not a cinerea)."

"I wouldn't call it "only" an albino! The variation within your particular butterfly is far rarer than a cinerea."

Pectoral Sandpiper but mostly Butterflies

It looked like a Pectoral Sandpiper through the telescope, all the experts in the hide said it was a Pectoral Sandpiper, ergo, it probably was a Pectoral Sandpiper. So why am I unhappy. The answer - because I could not get a good picture, that convinced me 100% when I got home, that I had the identification right.

Pectoral Sandpiper - Pulborough Brooks

Pectoral Sandpiper

Both shots have huge crops and over sharpening and are at the limits of the cameras capabilities. They are also very similar to those that I managed to capture the last time I saw a  Pectoral Sandpiper. Looking at Collins I have; slightly de-curved bill, good demarcation between breast and belly with breast markings coming to a point, one side of white V on its back, neat scaly pattern on upper part feathers. I also have a pale based bill on another equally obscure shot.

I guess the confidence levels are better than 95% so I will probably count it.

Water levels were low around the reserve. Birds are starting to return but they need more rain and plenty of mud.

After seeing a report last week of Emerald Damselflies, Black Darters and Brown Hawkers on Black Pond I decided to have a look. What a difference a week makes. None of them there that I could see, but there were Emperors, Broad-bodied Chasers and Ruddy Darters present.

Broad-bodied Chaser

Ruddy Darter

The pond was drying up, but there were still four Emperors managing to patrol what looked like very small territories and without too much conflict. Even with it being easier to predict where they would be flying I still failed to get a decent picture of any of them and they seemed reluctant to move away from the pond to settle.

There were plenty of butterflies around Pulborough but I wanted to check out Houghton Forest and I thought it might be a bit cooler under the trees. I was also hoping to see a Purple Emperor which had been reported there.

Houghton did not disappoint, except for the Purple Emperor, with Small, Large, and Green-veined Whites, Silver Washed Fritillary, Comma, Peacock, Red Admirals, Brimstones and various Blues. I was feeling quite pleased and was even more so when I got home and found both Peacocks and a Painted Lady on the Lavender in the garden.

Comma

Large White

Silver-washed Fritillary

Silver-washed Fritillary

Common Blue on Birds-foot Trefoil

Brimstone

Painted Lady

Painted Lady

Peacock

Peacock