2018 - An Excellent Brown Hairstreak Year

[Nigel Cottle]

Brown Hairstreak did very well at Netherclay LNR, Taunton this year. I led a BC Somerset & Bristol Branch field meeting to the site on 19th Aug. and we recorded 12 females. My annual egg-count is now in its fifth year and all records were broken on 1st Dec. when I recorded 496, more than double the previous high.

[Matsukaze]

Yesterday I found the eggs at Hurcot near Green Down, in a spot they were last recorded in 33 years ago, and at the Somerset Wildlife Trust reserve at Perry Mead towards Castle Cary.

[CallumMac]

It's good to hear these reports, since the impression I got from comments on this forum - and from my own attempts to find them - was that BH had had a rather average summer!

[David M]

It's good to hear these reports, since the impression I got from comments on this forum - and from my own attempts to find them - was that BH had had a rather average summer!

Agreed. I only found a couple of dozen eggs at the prime Welsh site for this species on 27 September. Previously, I have had counts well into three figures, although never approaching the sort of numbers that Nigel located.

[MrSp0ck]

On the Kent Surrey Borders it was a good year and a very long flight period, eggs still appearing in November, and sites where we only had 8 eggs 2 years ago and 130 eggs this year. On one small Blackthorn there were 19 eggs on a 3 foot tall plant. The Spread into Kent has also continued with well over 500 eggs and many sightings of the butterflies.

They even seem to be laying on other non prunus foodplants too

Kent Female Brown Hairstreak, one of the first adult sightings since the 1960s

and 2 eggs on Hawthorn

We did an egg search at other nearby Kent sites and found eggs there too.

[David M]

Seems to have been good generally, although it was slow going to begin with.

The annual count at the Pembrokeshire site wasn't far off setting records, so one hopes there will be a bumper emergence of this species in 2019.