White-letter Hairstreak - Favourite Photo of 2011

[Vince Massimo]

This is a thread in which to post your favourite photo(s) of a particular species taken in 2011.....................or the last time you saw one!

This is part of a series which has been growing throughout the winter with the aim of covering all 58 British species. This is the final week and any remaining gaps now relate to the Cryptic Wood White and our rare migrants. Anybody is now welcome to open a seperate topic on these.

Details of places, dates, times and circumstances would be appreciated and please feel free to contribute observations of behaviour, personal encounters, anecdotes and other interesting points.

Vince

[dilettante]

My favourite, taken at Bedford Purlieus. I took an afternoon off work rather late in the WLH season, so was delighted to find a few of these beauties still around, albeit a little past their prime:


Bedford Purlieus, 20-Jul-11. Sony A700, Tamron 180/3.5

[Wurzel]

This was a surprise find during a family camping holiday during the last week of July. We stayed at Thistledown Farm near Stroud and went for a walk at Woodchester Park, the local National Trust site. After a mammoth walk down the tree lined hill we reached the Manor House, only to find that it was owned by a different organisation and it would cost us £18 to look around a ruined 5 bed roomed house We declined and instead walked further downhill towards the first of 5 lakes. At this point my younger daughter suddenly ran out of energy so we stooped for a break by a cleared area. Whilst the girls were refuelling I had a look at the huge number of thistles close by in a newly cleared area. There were 2 or 3 Red Admiral, a couple of Gatekeepers, the odd Meadow Brown and up to 8 Peacocks as well a tiny grey looking little thing. At first I thought it would be a battered and worn blue so I didn't approach to closely, but a glimpse of it's dark underwing with an orange splodge elevated my pulse slightly. As I got in closer a noticed an ever so faint line so I knew it was a hairstreak, and the even fainter white W mark meant that I had stumbled onto a "lifer". As I slogged back up the tortorous hill with both the girls taking it in shifts to moan about being carried my wife kept flashing me murderous looks, muttering something like "all this way for a ...butterfly...".
I managed to convince her in the end that it really was just a lucky find...

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Michaeljf]

The photograph below is my favourite of a White-letter Hairstreak from 2011, but it's cheating a bit because it was taken in Melnik village in Bulgaria. I seemed to miss the WLH in Britain last year, unlike 2010 when I saw plenty a Forest Farm in Coryton, near Cardiff.

Michael


White-Letter Hairstreak, Melnik - South West Bulgaria, 29th June 2011.

[Vince Massimo]

I only photographed two individuals last year, both on the same day at my local site. They were a male and a female, but neither were in good condition. I don't have many images of White-letter Hairstreak, but these two were special because they confirmed the existance of a small colony on the site, which had previously gone un-recorded by the local transect walker or Surrey Wildlife Trust who own the site. This is the female, which looks very similar to the image taken by dilettante.

Female White-letter Hairstreak - Chaldon, Surrey 30-July-11

One of the small Elm trees on the site has recently died, but hopefully the colony will survive.

Vince

[David M]

I only saw one White Letter Hairstreak in the UK last year, that being at Alun Valley near Ewenny (the Welsh High Brown site). It was a bit faded so, like Michael, I've added a shot of the only other WLH I saw in 2011, which was when I was in the Massif Central.

I spotted a beautiful, fresh looking specimen nectaring on umbellifers in the scrubby field opposite my hotel: