Headed off with Matt down the Rhône Valley this morning, armed with my Bible for winter stages -
Tagfalter suchen im Winter - hoping to find ilex hairstreak eggs. Since the species lays on oaks, we also looked for purple hairstreak eggs.
Purple hairstreaks were, as ever, easy to find:
We even found four on a neatly severed branch that a trimmer must have cut off. Matt took them back to try and hatch at home (we didn't want to divide them up, thinking that the branch would thrive better in the early larval stages if we kept it entire).
Ilex proved more elusive, partly because most of the young oak bushes the species favours were growing on inaccessible slopes, and partly because we were initially looking only on very smooth, very young trunks. Ilex hairstreak lays 20-40cm up from the ground on the main trunk of a bushy young oak. Eventually, just before leaving, we found two, both parasitised (or simply eaten from the outside), on rather thicker stems than we had initially been examining. They were both, however, near the base of the bush and on the main trunk. As with all hairstreak eggs, we expect more success in the future, now our eyes are in.
(Ilex hairstreak eggs are larger than purple and this one, at least, was relatively conspicuous on the trunk)
(a closer view of the same egg)
(the second egg)
While I had my head buried in a young oak, Matt saw a couple of small tortoiseshells.
Guy
And Happy Birthday!
