Emergance day ,Silver Studds at Prees Heath june 29th 2015

Today I'm going into Shropshire to Prees Heath to hopefully shoot the Silver Studded Blues emerging with the ants, like i do every year. Its truly fascinating to watch this amazing co dependance between the butterflies and the ants :)
Arriving a bit late at about 8 am , but i know the best emergence time is usually between 10 and 12 o'clock,  it is later in the month than i normally visit but it has been a bit cool so hopefully I'm not to late!

I am walking down the main path through the trees to the best area to find them emerging, in the very short bell heather , i soon find a motionless female which is quite strange as usually there are loads of males looking for the females and they are the ones to be seen first.   it is quite cloudy but warm and so far i have not seen any flying.

Suddenly as i am lying on the ground shooting the female above, a Small Heath flys past and lands quite close ,  i shuffle a few feet and manage this shot before it takes of :D

I have now found yet another female perched on the heather flowers :)     beautiful strong silvery blue studd markings on this one :)

This is the area they should be emerging in, the very low heather in the middle left area in this image,  this is where the ants nest and the butterfly's will crawl out of the nest along with the ants which will then "clean" the butterfly as its wings unfold.   this can take between 4-8 minutes for the wings to fully unfold  but the ants may stay around quite some time afterwards.

Here is a male coming out , there are ants everywhere , must be a big nest under here and I'm going to get covered in the dam things  lol

                   Up he crawls , i have ants on my arms and all over my camera now!    Arghhhh

Time to put the canon mpe-65 macro lens and flash set up on now for some high magnification shots , i really want to get both the ants and butterfly eyes in focus in an image, which is going to be very difficult with the ants moving so fast!


                      Almost did it in this one :)         there are loads of ants climbing all over this male.

                                                 Haha    peek - a - boo  Ant :D

               Just got the image i wanted   Yay          After shooting almost 380 frames so far today!



                                                                       " Face to Face"

          Another male coming out of the same nest , i am getting covered in ants and have got to move from this nest as they are getting quite agitated and biting now :(

                                                     Managed to get this with the mpe  :)


                                                                 "A bit Crowded here"

Moving away and brushing all the ants of me, i go back to the first male which has now fully expanded his wings and most of the ants have now left him alone .

The beautiful heather flowers , these taller plant have loads of Silver studds perched up resting until the sun comes and and they start flying.

                                                                         A mating pair :)     
                clearly showing the colour difference between them ,the brown female and blue male.

                                        A male with his wings open in the long heather.

I have found another couple of males emerging, it is almost mid day now but is getting warmer with the sun coming out occasionally  :)

                             A lovely female in the sun  , love the look of these two images :)

                        Finally another mating pair, this time with good perch and background.

Silver Studded Blues at Prees Heath pt1 july 1st

With the British summer still not taking place!   again ! , the beautiful silver studds at Prees Heath were quite late emerging , think these are my favourite blue butterfly.   news that a few had been seen in the last few days,so i decided to go and have a look.  it was cold, dull, breezy and rain forecast so not really a promising day for photography.  But there is always a chance of getting that "special" shot , and as it turned out this was one of those days :)

Arriving at the car park early , i shot this lovely poppy flower first , the petals looking a bit crumpled!

i walk through on to the airfield site ,  the bell heather is in flower and looking very nice, will shoot it later.  coming to the first main roosting area, i notice no silvers, not a good sign :(  walking down through the silver birch trees into the central area next to the old runway ,i soon find a few low down in the long grass stems, the low light levels and combined with a strong breeze making it very hard to get sharp images!  this one is not too sharp !

this is the area they emerge in , black ants are everywhere and help the butterflies out of the ground. see last years blog

Another perched male silver stud , beautiful species :)

i have had a good look around and not seen any emerging which is a shame, i really wanted to photograph the ants cleaning the emergent butterfly. but will come again next week.  i find this grasshopper sitting on a single grass stem , which looks rather nice!

then i find yet another male sitting on the bell heather , makes a great image.  You can see the "Studds" standing out very well in this specimen, bright blue spots in the bottom edge of wing.

and an open wing shot in the heather

 

Now its time to get the mpe-65 lens out and shoot a couple of  high magnification images, these two are both focus stacked from 8 frames to increase depth of field.

one of the thistle flowers that are quite common here!

Then, i found this male silver studd which looked like it was playing with a red ant!   i have never noticed red ants here so was quite surprised to see one, and i watched its interaction with the butterfly for at least 15 minutes.  it kept walking around and climbing on the butterflies face! 

 This image is probably one of my favourites of the year so far , both ant & butterfly eyes are in focus , and the ant looks like it is facing off the butterfly :D

Something really special about this one!

and a crop showing more detail , notice all the blotches on the butterflies eye , most probably from overnight dew or rain.

That was superb image to finish of the morning :)   might be my fav image of the year!

all images shot with canon 5d2,100mmL & mpe-65 macro lens

Silver Studded Blues with Ants at Prees Heath june 2011

Back in the middle of summer i visited Prees Heath in Shropshire to see the rare Silver studded blues - plebeius argus,  Prees Heath is the only location for them in Shropshire and it has a huge colony, last year over 1000 individual butterflies were counted in one morning!  the site is on an old airfield runway which is very exposed to the wind which was to be a big problem all day!

Unfortunately this year the weather had been warm one day , cold the next , so the butterflies started emerging over a number of weeks and not in a very short period like last year!.

This was the first time i actually met Gillian :)

The first silver stud i shot was a newly emerged male , as it was breezy i had to hold the stem in left hand while holding it high enough to be sheltered out of the wind by a large shrub and shoot single handed!   the IS on the 100mm L macro came in handy!

I also found a beautiful Meadow Brown -  maniola jurtina, early in the morning down in a ditch out of the breeze :)  and managed this superb image!

Followed by a Small Heath coenonympha pamphilus also sheltering in the same area!

As the temperature started warming up the silvers started appearing in good numbers, and found a few emerging being cleaned by the ants .unfortunately Gill did not arrive in time to see this event!  late as usual !

There is a special relationship between the butterflies and the ants,  to survive the silver studded blue requires the presence of ants together with open ground with bell and ling heather near the ants nests. the caterpillar is tended  by the ants as it feeds and then it turns into a chrysalis underground in the chambers of the ants nest!  The ants benefit by feeding on a honey like substance excreted by the Caterpillar, when the butterfly emerges it is helped out of the nest and then cleaned by the ants as its wings unfold!   it is an amazing site to see!   i hope these shots and videos tell the story.

A couple of closer views shot with canon mpe-65 macro lens.

                                                                    Shot with 100mm L

Here is a video of a female silver surrounded by males!

( click u tube icon for larger view)

                                            

 

And a fed up butterfly punching an ant, who then cleans the butterflies face!  lol

               A newly emerged male being tended to by the ants!  it really is an amazing site to watch! 

  

  Later in the afternoon we found quite a few perching in the long grass and low shrubs out of the wind all      along the edge of the main runway area., wind is a real pain trying to shoot delicate butterflies but through perseverance i managed quite a few images.

                                                              here is a female posing beautifully !

and a male perched on grass stem!  clearly shows the differences in colour!

And a mating pair!

                                                            Then i found a large Skipper!

                        this family of butterflies are not my favourites, always think they are a bit ugly! lol

 I tried a wide angle shot with 17-40L + 12mm extension tube added!  I think it works quite well showing the habitat in the frame, will try more of these type of images next year!

Here is a female perched beautifully! 

Here are three videos of emerging adults,available in 720p on  you tube !  the males are instantly attracted to any emerging adult in the hope of finding a female!  

 take a look at all the ants in the second video, literally hundreds!!!!!!!!!!

And a closer view!

Eventually i found a late emerging male, and shot a few videos (720p on you tube)  at high magnification with mpe-65 lens

I do hope you enjoy watching these, this was the first time i have tried the video on the 5d2!

All shot with canon 5d2, mpe-65 and 100mm L macro