May 2009 Sightings

[Perseus]

Hello,

17 May 2009

Horseshoe Vetch in flower on Mill Hill

On the lower slopes of Mill Hill, the Horseshoe Vetch, Hippocrepis comosa, was at its peak on a blustery (Force 5 gusting to Force 6) late morning but the Privet could be seen to be making serious inroads compared to previous years. Because of the breezy conditions on an cloudy day, the butterflies were not as many as would be expected on a sunny day. On the one acre transect the count of Adonis Blues was 26 males and three females. Some of the males were ragged around the edges. Dingy Skippers were recorded at five positively identified, with one Small Heath and my first Painted Lady of the year. The Painted Lady was far from pristine. I did not notice any of the micro-moths in my brief visit.

Horseshoe Vetch starts flowering in middle to late April, peaks in mid-May, continues in abundance for about a week and is prevalent for a few days each side of a week and is usually all over by the first week in June.
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/Hippocrepis_c ... #Flowering

First Adur Butterfly Dates 2003 to 2009
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/ButterfliesFFT.htm

Adur Butterfly & Large Moth List
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/Butterfly-list2009.html

includes other sightings on the day omitted from this message (by oversight). Eight species were recorded. The others were Large White, Speckled Wood, Holly Blue and the first Red Admiral for about a month.

Cheers

Andy Horton
glaucus@hotmail.com
Adur Valley Nature Notes
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/Adur2009.html
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/Adur2008.html
Adur Valley Nature Notes: May 2009
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/May2009.html

[Perseus]

A week or so ago I had a Green-veined White ovipositing on some Garlic Mustard in the garden. I've been keeping an eye on the eggs, and today they hatched

Canon 30D, Sigma 105mm lens with extension tubes. ISO 200, f16, 0.5s, tripod.

Cheers,

- Pete

IMG_4757.jpg

Brilliant photograph.

[Shirley Roulston]

Fantastic photos of the flowers Horseshoe Vetch and Bird's foot Trefoil, I love to go there one day to see such a wonderful sight. Thanks Andy.

[sahikmet]

Hi,

Today at Mill Hill, difficult conditions with strong wind and rain but managed to find at upper slopes Painted lady 1, Holly blue 2 with damage to the wings, Dingy skipper 2.

Cheers

Sezar

[Neil Hulme]

Hi all,
I got some unexpected time off on Saturday when a courier failed to deliver some urgent work so I headed down to Bentley Wood. Amongst other 'goodies' I managed a few shots of this nice Narrow-bordered Bee Hawkmoth. Two of them were busy nectaring on the bluebells.
Neil

[Neil Hulme]

Hi all,
Despite torrential rain and flooded roads a handful of people were sufficiently optimistic to attend a Sussex BC New Members walk on the Downs at Amberley today. The grey stuff suddenly melted away just as we arrived and I felt a bit miffed on behalf of those that had rung me to discuss the local weather conditions, and had taken the seemingly sensible decision to stay at home. But as is often the case, 'who dares wins' and we got a reasonable list of Small Blue, Brown Argus, Common Blue, Small Copper, Green Hairstreak, Dingy Skipper, Painted Lady, Small Heath, Red Admiral, Green-veined White and Cinnabar Moth. Not too bad for mainly 'marginal' conditions.
Neil

[FISHiEE]

Superb shots Neil.

Excellent find of the Border Bee Hawk Moth and excellent shots too. Yet to see either of the species in the UK. Are there any reliable sites for them or is it more by luck finding them?

John

[Neil Hulme]

Thanks John,
BTW I was out with Sherie New (one of your 'Seeing' photo group) on Sunday. She's just joined the BC Sussex Branch and came along on the New Member's Day trip - pretty good with the camera! Narrow-bordered Bee Hawkmoths are really quite rare and I'm not aware of anywhere East of Bentley where you have much (if any!) chance of seeing them. Broad-bordered Bee Hawks can be seen fairly reliably on our own reserve, which I imagine you will be visiting for SPBF soon.
Neil

[FISHiEE]

Thanks Neil. I've never actually met any of the SEEING group face to face, just over the internet so you're one up on me!

I'll have to make a point of visiting at some other time of day than the evening. Only got 2 weeks left here before 5 weeks coliday across Europe. Might get to see the SPBF's this weekend (If they're out by then).

John

[Piers]

On a related subject - an amazing bilateral gynadromorph here:

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=141516

Cheers,

- Pete

Spectacular! This photo is of a truly remarkable butterfly. Only a handful of specimens exist of bilateral gynandromorph orange tips, it is a significantly rare occurrence. Intersex or mixed gynandro orange tips do occur with much more frequency, more perhaps than other species. However this could be because they are obviously 'different' even in flight.

Felix.

[TedP]

Saw my first Swallowtail of the year this morning at Hickling (Norfolk Wildlife Trust) despite the wind. Photography impossible though. TedP

[Shirley Roulston]

Saw 1 Green-veined White, poor little thing he flew up into the wind and by now he'll sure to have rearched Ireland.
Shirley

[Jack Harrison]

Superb shots Neil.

I totally agree. But of course Neil uses a “Box Brownie", aka Panasonic 6 Mp compact.

Note that depth of field! No blurred antennae. Shows off the advantages of a Box Brownie over a Hasselblad.

Of course, Box Brownies are so cheap you could always purchase lots of them and treat as “disposable” cameras. I suppose you could even make a bank of nine (or more) of them (3 x 3 array) and have a 50+ megapixel “camera”. Would out perform a DSLR any day - at a fraction of the cost. I think NASA does something like that.

Jack

[Susie]

Stunning shots, Neil, as always.

One orange tip egg laying on honesty in my garden this afternoon.

[Gruditch]

Note that depth of field! No blurred antennae. Shows off the advantages of a Box Brownie over a Hasselblad.

Note the depth of field, a DSLR can do it too.

Gruditch

[Jack Harrison]

Gruditch:

Note the depth of field, a DSLR can do it too.

How much longer before the lighthouse falls over?

May I offer a tip to others– not of course to you Gary.

It is often tempting to get the whole of a building into the frame by tilting the camera upwards. That can result in leaning verticals. Sure with modern digital photography, software such as PhotoShop is capable of post processing to overcome the leaning, but is a bit of a hassle.

But remember that leaning occurs when the film plane (sensor in modern language) is not truly vertical - as is the case when the camera is tilted. In the old days of film camera when post processing was more difficult, I aimed to keep the film plane vertical by the simple method of using the camera in the portrait mode. I would use wide angle, aim the centre of the viewfinder at the horizon and then there would be no leaning in the resulting photo. It was then a simply process to trim off the unwanted redundant foreground (or blank off in the case of slides).

With digital photography, I often adopt the same procedure and simply crop to leave out as much of the foreground as is appropriate. Sure there are issues such as some loss of pixels. My current camera is 4000x3000, so in the portrait mode, I only have in effect 3000 width to play with; but that is more than adequate in most cases.

Jack

[Padfield]

If you're going to crop to the final result, another method is to use landscape mode and put the potentially leaning feature in the centre - that way vertical tilt won't make it lean. Then crop it to the left or right.

However, leaning is not necessarily wrong. If you are in a street, surrounded by tall buildings, for example, they really do seem to lean in over you, and a photograph that emulated this would not be faulty.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

Guy says:

However, leaning is not necessarily wrong.

I used here to an extreme degree.

It was slightly amusing as I took the photo. I was using my angled screen and looking horizontally at it; the actual camera meanwhile was aiming more or less vertically. Some people appeared from nowhere at that very moment, saw me looking apparently looking at the trunk of the tree and wondered what on earth I was up to. “Anything interesting?” “No just photographing a tree”. They wandered off thinking they had just met the “Nutter of the Brecks”

Jack

[NickB]

.... “Nutter of the Brecks”
Jack

Not another one surely!?

[Gruditch]

Fair cop on the leaning lighthouse, and full marks for the evasive answer, that avoided the actual depth of field topic Jack, very Gorden Brown like. I did take shots in portrait, and with subject in the centre, but only in the above image, did I get all the things I wanted to encompass in the shot, ( Thrift in the foreground, plus the stone that looks like an old grave, on the right ).
There are probably programs as you say, that could sort out leaning affects, but when I have tried that sort of thing, it kind of just stretches the image, and I would no doubt end up with a lighthouse, thicker at the top. Which I think is less desirable than a leaning object, so I have compromised, and gone with what I got.



BTW, despite the horrible weather at the weekend, I still saw 5 Painted Lady's on the south coast.

Gruditch