Dark Green Fritillary - Favourite Photo of 2024

[Wurzel]

Dark Green Fritillary - Favourite Photo of 2024

Week 4

What with Halloween gone and Bonfire Night imminent the shops will soon start playing their Xmas songs! So while you grind your teeth in exasperation consolation comes in the form of this weeks’ Favourites.

Please could I ask that everyone waits until a topic has been opened by me for a particular species before posting photos as then it will be easier to keep track of things? Of course our overseas members are very welcome to fill in the obvious gaps relating to rare UK migrants. As in previous years 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.
Here we got then!

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Bertl]

I visited St Cyrus NNR near Montrose in late June to look for Dark Green fritillary butterfly. It was very sunny on the 2 days I visited so the butterflies were very active. I only managed a couple of shots. I also need to mention that the numbers were way down on 2023.

Cheers

Bert.

[ChrisStamp]

Another Scottish one (DGF are very widespread here!), from a site in the Sidlaw Hills near Coupar Angus

[Neil Freeman]

I visited the south side of Harbury Spoilbank in Warwickshire in late June to look for Dark Green Fritillary this year although numbers had been dropping there in recent years due to scrub encroachment. I couldn't help but notice the long rank grass growth this year which no doubt contibuted to the fact that I only saw a couple of fast flying males and only managed some record shots.

Down on the Lizard in August I saw a few flying around the cliffs by Kynance Cove, mostly well worn by that stage of the season but one individual was not too bad and posed nicely for me.

Dark Green Fritillary - Kynance Cove 06.08.2024

Dark Green Fritillary - Kynance Cove 06.08.2024

Cheers,

Neil.

[millerd]

I found DGF at all three of the spots I usually visit for them - though numbers were a bit lower than usual at Box Hill and Aston Rowant, and more markedly so at Denbies hillside. However, I did keep seeing egg-laying females at all three locations well into August long after the last males had vanished. Here a couple of fresh males from Box Hill at the start of July...

...and a fresh female from the same spot a fortnight later.

Dave

[Wurzel]

Dark Green Fritillary

I don’t know what happened this year but I almost missed this species! At least that’s how it felt. When I did finally go looking for them it was already well into July and a lot of them were past their best. Luckily the females seem to emerge a week or so later and so when I caught up with this one she was still in mighty fine nick, even the wing fringes were intact. Her cracking state of dress meant that she was a shoo-in for the Fave DGF.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

This female at Rhossili Head on 26th July was my favourite:

[David M]

Oops, forgot about this one....

...seen in the Arctic in early July:

[IAC]

Lots of opportunities with DGF now that I have somehow achieved the skills required to spot them in the early morning, this however was not taken in the early morning and was found whilst scouring the cliff ledges overlooking the North Sea whilst looking for Northern Brown Argus. She was quite some sight to see. She must have been fairly fresh as she sat for a good while before launching skyward into a cloud of Grayling that chased her with wild abandon down the precipitous cliff towards the sea.

[bugboy]

This is probably the freshest female I found this year, on Box Hill.

Also there a couple of weeks earlier I came across the curious sight of a couple of males going bananas over a small sprig of moss. I can only presume it had the scent of a freshly emerged female on it, perhaps a drop of meconium. Whatever it was, it was like catnip to them and I was all but ignored as they searched in vain for the invisible female.

[David T]

This is my favourite as the photo was taken in a new 1k square grid location, well at least the first record here since 1990.

Dark Green Fritillary - Houghton Regis 17th July 2024 @ 11:44am

This other favourite a female, she was looking for suitable places for laying her eggs, I'm not sure if I captured an egg that was just laid? They will tend to lay eggs anywhere as long as the food plant is close by.

Female Dark Green Fritillary - Totternhoe 27th July 2024 @ 14:11pm