Silver-spotted Skipper - Favourite Photo of 2014

[Wurzel]

Week 15

So continues sequence of posts giving one and all the opportunity to showcase their favourite shots of 2014 (or the last time you saw one)!

Please could I ask that everyone waits until a topic has been opened by me for a particular species before posting photos? Of course our overseas members are very welcome to fill in the obvious gaps relating to rare UK migrants. As like last year details of locations, dates, times and circumstances would be welcome as would any accompanying stories and anecdotes or other observations of behaviour and interesting other points.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[MikeOxon]

There are several colonies of this butterfly along the Northern edge of the Chlterns, one of the best known being at Aston Rowant NNR.

My 'favourite' shot was taken at the end of an afternoon watching this species on the grassy slopes of the reserve, as individuals flitted from flower to flower. This individual, however, was resting in the middle of the path and seemed 'bomb-proof', giving me plenty of time to take many photos:

Aston Rowant NNR - 22nd July 2014
Nikon D300s with Tamron 90mm macro - 1/180s@f/13 ISO400

Mike

[Susie]

This one was at Denbies Hillside last year.

[bugboy]

Had never seen a Silver Spotted Skipper until this year so in that respect all my pics are my favourites but I've plumped for this one basking on some Eyebright at Box Hill.

[Neil Freeman]

For the past few years I have taken a run down the M40 at the end of July to see Silver-spotted Skippers at Aston Rowant, this being the nearest site for me to see this species. I usually aim to get there around 9.00am to try for some photos before they warm up too much and go into fully charged zipping about mode. So it was last year that I arrived around 8.45 and within minutes of walking through to the hillside, I found one in a nice classic pose on a Scabious flower.

Silver-spotted Skipper - Aston Rowant 29.07.2014

Cheers,

Neil.

[Wurzel]

Silver Spotted Skipper

This year it felt like this was one of those species that ‘got away’ to use a fishing analogy. Last year a couple of trips and two different sites provided me with plenty of triple S action but his year I was limited to only one visit to Stockbridge Down accompanied by my girls. This meant that it was harder to get so many shots to choose a favourite from, an issue that wasn’t helped by the weather being far windier than forecast. One of my memories from the day is of following a SSS successfully right up until the wind caught it and then it was gone.
Luckily although I didn’t get many shots I was more than happy with the ones I did get. This was my favourite because it was so fresh it still had the limey green colour on the underwings with the little freckles of gold as the sun caught them.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[millerd]

I am fortunate in having three sites within well under an hour's drive, of which Aston Rowant is probably the best. They are widespread at Box Hill too, but not at such a density, and at Denbies they are even more spread out.

Here are the first and the last I saw this year, plus one in the middle: the first from Aston Rowant on 17th July...

...the middle one, from a slightly different perspective, is from Box Hill on 1st August...

...and the last, an egg-laying female, from Denbies on 7th September.

Dave

[David M]

Visited Aston Rowant on 26th July 2014.

There weren't quite the number of SSS's as I had seen in 2013, but they were easy to find nonetheless: