Pearls in North Wales 5th May 2014

Its a long bank holiday weekend in Ruthin with Jan and the Terrible Twosome, and hopefully as the weather is much warmer than this time last year. The Pearl Bordered Fritillaries will have emerged up at Eyarth rocks, which is a butterfly conservation site which protects this species of butterfly.
                                          It is a lovely camp site just outside Ruthin.

                                       The Terrible Twosome have settled in ok after the drive :)

it must have been a stunning house when in good condition, such a shame to see it like this now

                                                         a few of the locals are watching us, mother and...

                                                                 Awwwwww   cute :)

the next morning we are heading for Eyarth Rocks , its about 40 minutes walk up into the hills :)   looking a beautiful day for a nice walk even if the butterflies are not there.

                  Taking the bridal way i have just shot this miner bee on a dandylion flower:)

 Heading up the steep path through the woods that will eventually come out at the reserve , the silver birch make a good contrast with the bluebells

                                                    Moll in a sea of Forget-me-Knots :D

Finally we come to the reserve entrance , in the clearings Bracken just starting to come up and bluebells still in flower, would be great to photograph a butterfly sitting on one of those :)

 This is the area where the Pearls should be found , i have a good look while we are walking through but cannot see any butterflies .

 It is quite warm now and the sun is starting to come through the light cloud giving lovely light, If i can find something to shoot!  Jan and the dogs are taking a rest near the top.........while i go for a hunt.

                           After just a few minutes i have just spotted my first Pearl :)   Yay!

This is the area , i have spotted 3 or 4 now and they look like they must have just emerged as they are not flying too far before settling.

                                                     Now to find a nicely perched Butterfly :)

Found one on a Bracken frond, just sitting drying its wings, this will make a perfect subject to photograph:)

        

                                                                           "Perfection"

             moving slightly  i can get out of focus blue bells give a different background colour :)

                 It has flown a short distance with me chasing it and perched halfway up an old stem ,                                                          love the back lit wings :D

                                  
        and now to get the mpe-65 out to do a portrait :)     focus stacked to increase depth of field

                 I'm happy now , so we are continuing the walk and i have just shot this dandy :)

 We are now back to the field after a really good morning walk , agreat avenue of trees and ..........

 

the end of a good day :)

its "Yoda" the sheep :D

 

A normal Lamb :)

                                                                   a magnificent oak.

Return to Wyre forest Butterflies & Others june 10 th

Another trip to the beautiful Wyre forest, weather was looking quite warm and sunny!  the Wood whites will still be showing But, Small Pearl Bordered Fritillaries have started emerging so a hunt for those  will be the starting point .  The marshy areas down by Dowles brook will be the best place to search.  
Straight away Demoiselles could be seen flying , both Banded and Beautifulls , but i only managed this one shot of a female banded Demoiselle.

walking though the meadow there were loads of peal bordered but could not see any small pearls unfortunately:(       i used my canon mpe-65 macro lens to shoot this Dancefly feeding.

                                                        a speckled bush cricket nymph

                       Then on a wooden fence post , two different species of shield bugs:))))

These meadows where alive with insects of all kinds, some i had never seen before but didn't really spend time shooting them as i wanted to find the small pearls hopefully at the Hurst coppice area .
on the way back through the meadow to the car park i found this crab spider which had just caught its meal:)

I now drove back to the other end of the forest , and started walking down the track to Hurst Coppice , there were Dor beetles everywhere on the track.

                                                       Time to get the mpe out again :)

  i made my way down past the pigs and down to the area i was in last week where all the wood whites were.straight away i found a few either feeding or perched up :))

                 I had a good search for small pearls but only spotted Pearl bordered :(

                                                        and a very early Large Skipper :)

But on the sandy ground i noticed a beautiful black & white Bee burrowing ,a Ashy Miner bee  Andrena cineria .    i set up the mpe again and waited for it to emerge from its burrow :)

One final Wood White image

That was enough for today ,but while walking back up to the car , i found this wolf spider with her babies being carried on her back, mpe time again :)

Stopping off at another site on way home, i shot these Grizzled skippers

                                               and a longhorn beetle Agapanthia villosoviridesce

The end of another good days shooting , but still haven't managed to see small pearl bordereds yet!

         Next trip is to the cumbrian mountains for a good climb and to see butterflies too :)))

Wood Whites in Wyre forest May 28th

After all the fun with shooting the fritillaries the previous sunday in the Wyre forest, after being given a map of the Hurst Copice area of the forest where Wood Whites are to be found , they are a delicate species of butterfly that are quite rare and very localised in there habitat.  think this is the only place in the forest where they can be found. It is another species i have never seen so seemed like a good idea for a return visit to this beautiful forest. i asked  Pete if he wanted to come and picked him up on the way , he has not been to the wyre before.
we arrived at the small parking place and started walking down this track , it appears to be about a mile or 2 to the area on the map i have been given.

We come to the Piggery, and talk to the locals for a while ,but they dont seem interested in what we asked them!   lol

 

Eventually we came to a sharp left hand bend which was marked clearly on the map, just where the stream crosses over, this was the area we wanted.  almost imediately i spotted our intended target, the Wood White!  Yay!  but couldnt get a pic , even after chasing it around for a few mins! 

There were loads of light brown day flying moths, i managed this backlit image which looks quite good :)

  moving around to the stream, there were a few butterflies fluttering and feeding on the wild flowers.  here is my first image of a wood white :)

Beautiful delicate butterflies , with a very fluttery flight!   we soon found quite a few along this short path , it is getting quite warm in the sun now , not good for photographing white butterflies though!

While i was chasing a few around along this path trying to get feeding shots, Pete had found one perched up in the shade of a group of trees and had taken a load of shots,   here is my image of that individual specimen which just sat in the one spot not moving!  wish more would do that!

Moving back to the corner which is in full sun , near to where above image was shot, two whites were basking in the sun!  not ideal conditions but i managed a couple of images , this one must have emerged this morning  , the wings still have not fully expanded and the sun is catching on them:)

After shooting this one , i decided to try and find a few fritillaries to shoot , up the path in full sun quite a few pearl bordereds where flying , this one perched for a few moments on bracken frond :))

Then i found one on the ground and it crawled onto my finger!  Yay

Then it stayed fairly still and i placed it onto a pale stone on the ground to take some high magnification portraits with the mpe-65 macro lens , taken at f7 and used 5 frames to focus stack to increase the depth of field!

With this done, i thought it might be a good idea to shoot a Wood White with same magnification , just need to find one that will stay put!   lol     i started moving back towards to "corner" when i found along the left side of this image one feeding on a pea flower!

Then i found another one that looked quite sleepy!  lol  after shooting its full view

i then moved it to another better perch, well not that good ! , but at least it was stable so i could hold the stem in my left hand while resting lens barrel on my hand so all the frames are fairly well aligned for the focus stack to work!

I spotted a few Dingy Skippers , this is the only image i got!

so after a really sucessful day ,we made our way back up the track,  said goodbye to the pigs:D  but they didnt really seem interested in us!  haha

Then , walking down a large glade between huge trees , a BAT appeared flying in broad dalylight!  AMAZING to see!  stupid thing!    lol  it flew around for about 5 minutes !

The end of the day, a really great days shooting!

all images taken with Canon 5d2, 100mm & mpe-65 macro lens