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Orange-tip - Favourite Photo of 2024

Week 12

Hopefully everyone is stuffed and not just with good cheer from Christmas 2024? This will be the last Favourites post of 2024…but don’t worry we’ll still be continuing into 2025 as we’ve only just reached the ‘P’s’.

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.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

Here's hoping 2025 turns out to be a better year for butterflies than 2024 was:

Between my local Aberdeen riverside patch and Clackmannanshire orange tips were bountiful in May.

I was in Monkton NR when I saw and actually got a shot of an Orange Tip this year I'd tried to get shots of them before in different places but all were too busy so I was pleased when this one settled for a while, the weather was warm but cloudy that day so I was lucky Goldie

Just loved this photo take at John Weston Nature Reserve at The Naze on the 17th May.
The Orange Tip seamed to be everywhere we went this year, even had a go few in our garden. Julian

Lovely colour contrast, Julian.

This one was one of a small batch of reared ones protected in captivity from larval stage. An opportunity for some arty photos before release, but the same thing could be achieved with a piece of white card behind wild roosting ones, and a handheld light source.

Eye-to-eye! A reared specimen before release.

Impressive, Chris!

David M wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2024 4:34 pm Impressive, Chris!

Here in Perthshire there are very few spring butterflies David, and the season only really kicks off in mid-May, which means getting creative with Orange-tips is one of the few spring options

Orange -Tips had a pretty good season locally in 24' one of the few few species that did ! I always like to rear a few each season.

I like this photograph as it was the first photograph I captured of an Orange-tip for the year, and it was on my birthday. It felt like Spring had truly arrived and worthy of a celebration.

An average season at best for Orange-tips around my local patch, they showed up everywhere I would expect them to but only one or two at a time.
When we went down to see our daughter for a few days in early May I saw higher numbers along the lanes and paths opposite the B&B we atayed at in Bosham.
Cheers,

Neil.

Orange-tip

Back in April I chanced upon an Orange-tip at Five Rivers. I chose this shot as my favourite as it seemed to have almost everything in it. It was a nice frame filler, nice and sharp, showed the topside which was nicely/heavily marked with the black contrasting against the vivid orange, showed the underside with its cracking cryptic markings and it was posing passively while it fed; all of which belied the trials and tribulations that had occurred prior to the picture being taken. Plus it was feeding on a Bluebell, a flower which always seems to elevate any butterfly shot.
Have a goodun

Wurzel

Since I've being doing back-to-back trips in Spain in late April/early May, UK Orange Tips have been largely off my radar.

Managed to photograph this male on its favourite nectar source, herb robert, on 15th May at Crymlyn Burrows:

One of each sex from me, feeding on some springtime flora.

Not a bad year at all for the species on my local patch - but they managed to get through their season before the sunshine took a break for the summer. As ever, I took a lot of shots of the species during their couple of months or so in the spotlight, but these four from the peak at the end of April are as representative as any... Hopefully not too long now before we see them again.

Dave

Unusually the first Orange Tip of 2024 happened to be a female. I would normally expect to encounter a few males for a few days before the first encounter of a female. I have therefore choosen this first of the year female Orange Tip as my favourite.

Butterfly Timing
One year, my earliest seasonal sighting of an Orange-tip butterfly was on April 2nd (a butterfly not from my property). That picture is now held as a seasonal garden work record, relating to seasonal flowering timings, in case I do more pre-season work, with a better remembered seasonal understanding.
As I owned my own Business and an absent client might have been trying to catch a "Butterfly boy" here is a different picture taken of an Orange-tip butterfly.
The female I surveyed, possibly from first flight (I knew not exactly where from) and was quite quickly intercepted by a male. A brief courtship pursued, with this resting perch: This was the first time I had photographed Orange-tip butterflies mating. #VideoSetting