Wurzel

[trevor]

It's a great pity that the BH season always coincides with that Dog show at Shipton.
Great report, but it's your Small Heath shot that does it for me.

Great stuff,
Trevor.

[bugboy]

Glad you got the result even if you had to run the gauntlet. People just don't understand how perilous this hobby of ours can be sometimes!

[Wurzel]

Cheers Trevor To be fair it's only over three days but generally the days that I can get there which coincide with the main egg-laying activity it seems. Oh well if it was easy it wouldn't be worth doing
Cheers Bugboy Indeed when I started photographing butterflies I was not aware of how dangerous it would be When I was a birder the main dangers were a farmer shouting "Oi get off my land!" and possibly a puddle that was slightly deeper than expected. With butterflying there are rabid dogs to face down, venomous snakes to circumvent and horrible wee beasties that feast on yer blood

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[trevor]

Cheers Bugboy Indeed when I started photographing butterflies I was not aware of how dangerous it would be When I was a birder the main dangers were a farmer shouting "Oi get off my land!" and possibly a puddle that was slightly deeper than expected. With butterflying there are rabid dogs to face down, venomous snakes to circumvent and horrible wee beasties that feast on yer blood

Have a goodun

Wurzel[/quote]

And of course the hazard of what Doggies leave behind, and their owners fail to pick up !.

[millerd]

What a great selection of Brown Hairstreaks, Wurzel! Obtained at risk to life and limb too by the sound of it.

I have to say that dogs (or rather their owners) have spoiled more butterfly outings for me than any other single thing, including ticks. I could go on...

Cheers,

Dave

[Wurzel]

Cheers Trevor On the plus side those little forgotten packages often house a host of butterflies en mass
Cheers Dave I've been quite lucky in that my negative encounters have been few and far between. The main problem at Shipton is not teh dogs but actually the owners as thy block access to the Hedge

Dordogne - Wednesday 15-08 Part 2 – The First Day Proper…

After lunch I cleared up and tidied round while the girls went and had a swim. I didn’t mind as on the way day to join them I was distracted by a tiny moth/butterfly flitting around the ‘garden’. It looked like some form of Grizzlie which at first I thought was a red-underwing Skipper due to the greatly reduced markings on the fore wings and the ground colour on the underwings but now I’m not so sure what it could be. Either way it was a cracking little butterfly and it contrasted nicely with its perch; discarded swimming goggles. There were more distractions down near the lake with a miniscule Blue which I put down as a Short-tailed but then all thoughts of butterflies were put to one side for at least half an hour as I went for a row with the girls.

After this a quick walk round the lake to the car produced a nice Glannie and a Green-veined white though both were too quick and didn’t stop long enough and neither did a Geranium Bronze at St Marie de Garud where we’d headed out too to visit a Boulongerie. In the local churchyard a large Buddleia hosted at least 6 Hummingbird Hawk Moths but they were all too high up to get any shots off. When we got back I nipped off for half an hour to the Clearing. This time I worked slightly further down and didn’t just hang around the ‘entrance’ at the side of the road. This really is proving to be a cracking little area with Glannies, Small Heath, Heath Frits and Silver-washed Fritillaries in among the Blues, Wood Whites and Browns. Joining the party this afternoon were 2 High Brown Frits. I did try and turn them into Niobes but the required black spot and veins didn’t materialise despite a concerted effort. All too soon my allotted time was up so I walked back and drank tea by the lake while the girls splashed around. I was joined by a miniscule mud-puddling Blue.

After tea the girls were back in the lake again made so I made off back to the Cutting. Again a Small Heath greeted me and there were Sooty Coppers, Common Blues, Wood Whites, various Browns and the odd Silver Washed doing fly-bys. On arrival the stand out butterfly was a female Spotted Fritillary – she was a first rate stunner. I then took in some of the Heaths, Knapweed and Glannies and started to get my eye in for distinguishing the Knapweeds; on the top side the fore wing looked concave and one of the markings on the margin (about three from the bottom) is really exaggerated and displaced; the underside looks a little like a cross between a Glanville and a Heath Frit.

Having made my study a Cloudy dropped in but as is often the way it didn’t hang around long enough for a photo but it was still good to add it to the holiday tally. As I gazed around taking in the fantastic site of so many butterflies fluttering about I didn’t quite know where to look next and so I sort of stumbled and lurched about like a camera wielding zombie. Finally I settled on a butterfly and came back from my undead like state. It was a cracking blue on some Birds-foot Trefoil. After this I settled back to my study of the Fritillaries. I just couldn’t get over how butterfly filled this place was and I had to keep pinching myself; it felt like a dream and I have expected to wake up back home with the rain clattering down.

As I strolled back down the road homewards and blissed out I reminisced about the day; and what a day with new species and sheer numbers. As I later nipped off to try and find some WiFi to nick the Froglet was still perched on the Hot Tub – so won’t be using that for a while then!

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[trevor]

A wonderful selection of Fritillaries, Wurzel.
I will award you a mrgreen for that High Brown, but of course it is
sometimes not difficult to find what would be a rare species over here,
quite easily in France. I remember finding an almost vertical bank, rich in
wild flowers, which was host to many Large Blues.

Great stuff,
Trevor.

[Philzoid]

Brilliant brilliant brilliant . Those fritillaries take me back to my time in France … the zombie stagger as you don’t know where to lurch to next . Cracking photos of the Spotted Fritillary in fact all the fritillaries ..and the Short-tailed Blue .

Your Skipper may be a Pyrgus malvoides Southern Grizzled Skipper formerly a sub-species of malvae but now a species in its own right.

As for the European tree-frog .. so good to have nature like that literally on your doorstep . Were the girls tempted to take him home?

Phil

[Goldie M]

Hi! Wurzel, fantastic Butterflies to cheer me up I love the Fritillaries , It' great to see other kinds for a change Goldie

[Art Frames]

A great story and some nice pictures. You didn't specifically mention the provencal short-tailed blue, but it is a nice fresh one. Usually I see more of those and less of the short-tailed, good to see them together, it adds to the confusion about where to stagger next.

I must confess I have been really tempted to smuggle a tree-frog as an adult, they are gorgeous. As a small boy there would have been no contest

[Maximus]

Great report and shots from the Dordogne, Wurzel Especially that female Spotted Fritillary

Mike

[Wurzel]

Cheers Trevor That was my over-riding memory of France, from now on in my mind France=Fritillaries - I saw 10 species whilst there
Cheers Philzoid Little L was indeed tempted, I think she missed our cat Teddy and so went round naming everything that shared our area - the 2 Robins, three lizards and of course the Frog As for the Skipper I was erring towards S.G.S but hoping maybe for Oberthurs at a push
Cheers Goldie Glad the shots served a good purpose apart from making me suffer from holiday sickness (the reverse of homesickness)
Cheers Peter I was a little unsure about that one and so didn't like to mention it, I did once but I think I got away with it I did do a check of Little L's bag before we left for the airport, just in case she'd smuggled the frog in and as I looked up she was checking my bag as well
Cheers Mike She was a beauty and one of those species that even though you can watch them moving still don't seem real - they look like they've been painted by a heavy handed toddler, one that likes really, really bright orange

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Andrew555]

Great shots of those lush Fritillaries Wurzel. And your Adonis from Laverstock is a cracker.

Cheers

[Wurzel]

Cheers Andrew The Dordogne was really Fritillary Central, they were all over the place, it was a joy to behold!

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[millerd]

A splendid array of Fritillaries, Wurzel, and the female Spotted is my favourite too. I've seen males in Greece, but never a female.

Cheers,

Dave

[Wurzel]

Cheers Dave

Tilshead 28-08-2018

I had arranged to meet Trevor for some Walls at about 9:30 but today some things didn’t go to plan. Our winter wood supply took ait longer to sort out with logs not only filling the wood store but also having bags of them secreted in numerous places round the house. Hence I didn’t get to the Churchyard until about 10:30. At that point the weather wasn’t showing any inclination of unclouding or at least not for long enough to bring the Walls out. So we cut our losses and I followed Trevor over to his Tilshead site.

It proved to be a cracking site right from the get go with a spacious Tarmac car park and Adonis Blues all over the place within 10 paces or so from the car. The field is pretty level which makes a nice change from traversing Downland after this species and I could stand back and scan ahead with little sapphires glinting out from the straw coloured background wherever I gazed. Trevor and I set to calling out every now and again when we found a particularly nice specimen – which when it came to female Adonis was quite often. Some of the males were looking a bit jaded, as were their smaller cousins but the females were looking fabulous. They were all chocolate and slate coloured with showy chequered margins.

There were other members making a supporting cast, a few Meadow Browns, Small Heath, Whites and the other Blues but for me the female Adonis were the real stars of though they didn’t glitter confetti like in the grasses as the showy males did when you found one looking ‘clean’ and lush they were a joy to behold.

All too soon our time was up so thanking Trevor for letting me in on what is a real gem of a site I headed back to the aftermath and chaos of ‘Wood Day’.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[trevor]

That morning at Tilshead was certainly one to remember.
I first discovered the rich pickings there, on my way back from ' the hill '
in the Spring of 2017. There is much similar grassland all over the Plain
but very few places to pull off the road. It was because of that ' car park ',
that I took the opportunity to pop in and have a look.
That morning I found plentiful Adonis, Common, Small Blue and Brown Argus.
Also Grizzled and Dingy Skippers. Green Hairstreaks were plentiful in the shrubbery
bordering the site.
Your lovely images sum up that August morning very well, but just wait until next Spring !.
Well worth a detour for one of your ' stop offs '.

Trevor.

[Matsukaze]

I see you found more fritillaries when you were in Dordogne than we did in late June (just Silver-washed and Weaver's). It was still good for butterflies though and we had 20+ species in the garden including Wood White, Swallowtail and Lesser Purple Emperor, and more HBHMs than I have ever seen in one place before.

I had a wander round your patch a couple of weeks ago - Hexagon Wood near Larkhill is full of huge elms, a number of which had fallen down, and I did look them over for WLH eggs without success - surely the butterfly must be there though.

[Wurzel]

Cheers Trevor Definitely going to look at how a can factor a few stop-offs here; I might have a few extra 'late meetings' next year
Cheers Matsukaze There has been some concern about the White-letter Hairstreak in Wiltshire so I'm not surprised that you drew a blank Mind you nearby the is a small colony of Dukes

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[essexbuzzard]

Nice collection of Adonis Blues, Wurzel, especially the females. Your Fritillaries from the Dordogne are none too shabby either. On my first trips to Europe, I was often surprised to see how common species are, that are rare or extinct in Britain . Black-veined White for example, and HBF.