A Review of Butterfly adventures 2011 June 20 - 3rd July

The end of June & July was the start of an amazing period of butterfly sightings, travelling hundreds of miles from Cheshire up to the lake district and down to warwickshire and Worcestershire in search of species i had never seen.
Starting off with my first ever trip to Arnside knott in cumbria on 20/6/11  my first ever sighting of a dark green fritillary :)

                a magnificent species!     i then shot my first Northern brown Argus ,a tiny butterfly!   lol

Next on the species list to be found on this incredible day was the Grayling , i have seen them plenty of times but never managed a shot.  they where all over the steep shale slopes basking in the sun!   lol

 

Another new species - the Small pearl bordered fritillary was next on this eventful day :)

 

I then travelled up to the lakes and into Borrowdale searching for dragonflies, and shot this beautiful Dark green fritillary!

The following weekend i was back at Arnside to hopefully see the High brown fritillary.

here is a newly emerged specimen!

and as a comparison a Dark green fritillary

and a Small pearl bordered fritillary

What a wonderful place to visit on a summers day!!! 

The next weekend trip was July 3rd , the Warwickshire butterfly conservation Trip to Oversley wood to hopefully see the elusive Purple Emperors !

I got there early after a 2 hour drive!    and after just 10 minutes i saw my first ever White admiral, then my first Marbled white and small skipper !   Amazing!

They are stunning!

and a small skipper/marbled shot :)

I then met up with the group on the hunt for the Emperors, very soon afterwards we found Silver washed fritillarys

    This is when Gill arrived, late as usual !   just in time to shoot

  a newly emerged Purple hairstreak ! a very rare sight

The Purple Emperors did not show themselves, so all the group split up and went separate ways around the forest!

almost immediately i found one on the path in front of me! Wow!   it flew around a bit then landed so i could get the shots i wanted!

 

After this amazing morning, i spent the whole afternoon with Gill watching Purple Emperors flying around the tree tops in the congregation area pines ! which may seem strange, but was actually one of my best memories of 2011! 

 and watching newly emerged Red Admirals in the woods!

 what an super end to a simply fantastic day!

all images taken with canon 5d2, 100mm L macro lens.

Grafton Wood Brown Hairstreaks PT2

After the previous weeks trip to Grafton wood , i just had to go back to see the beautiful Brown Hairstreaks again,  the weather forecast was for a very warm sunny day , perfect!
I  knew where to look this time,  so made my way down towards the orchard area, the blackthorn hedgerows on the main path before the old orchard are where i saw them last time.
It was a bit early and still quite cloudy as i walked the main path and there was no sign of any butterflies,so  i continued around and into the orchard to see if there were any migrant hawker dragonflies perched up, i saw quite a few in this area the previous week but could not get any shots.  this time there was no sign of any, after walking around all the apple trees i suddenly spotted a brown hairstreak flying across the open ground!  i quickly followed and she settled under one of the apple trees,  i just managed to shoot 4 frames quickly before she took flight,  i managed to keep her in sight untill she landed in the hedge surrounding the area  before she flew over the hedge!     Wonderful!

 The sun was now breaking through the cloud,  a Brimstone gonepteryx rhamni  few past me and landed to feed on a thistle flower, as i got close i noticed there was carder bee also feeding!

As it was now getting very sunny , i made my way back to the main hedge hoping the hairstreaks would make an appearance,   as soon as i got there i spotted 2 females working along the hedge and soon noticed that they where both laying eggs,  here is a shot of one high up in the hedge.

You can see a small piece missing from the wing where she has been crawling into the blackthorn to lay her eggs on the main stems, usually near a fork in the branch on one or two year old stems.

I followed her over to the hedge, just to the right of the water trough and actually watched her lay an egg on a blackthorn stem only about eight inches off the ground!

Here is the egg, shot at x5 magnification with canon mpe-65 macro lens, it is focus stacked to increase depth of field.  the eggs are approx  0.7 mm diameter!

and a cropped shot of above , isn't the structure amazing?

I then spotted a third female in the same area a few minutes later ,  that was the fourth sighting of the day!

Having shot the brown hairstreaks i decided to make my way into the wood to see if any thing else to shoot,  i soon found a beautiful Red Admiral,  vanessa atalanta

And a few dark bush crickets

I  walked around to the southern edge of the wood and found along the bridleway a few common darter dragonflies perching on the barbed wire fence, shooting from a low angle managed to keep a nice blue sky in the framing!

Then i saw another brown hairstreak and managed a few shots before she flew off, light was very bright but it does show a lot of textures on the wings!

Walking back towards the woods and back down the main path through the woods , i then found a very old looking male brown hairstreak feeding on angelica,  at appeared to have very few scales left on the wings!

and finally a large white pieris brassicae

in total, i saw nine brown hairstreaks this day, which is exceptional!    and i was extremely lucky, the following day i had intended to go back and meet Gill , but there was a bad holdup on the motorway and could not get there,  as it turned out not a single hairstreak was seen that day even though conditions were perfect!     someone did say i must have seen everyone else's share on my trip !  lol

ALL SHOTS TAKEN WITH CANON 5DMK2, 100MM L MACRO & MPE -65

phil

Oversley Woods 3rd July 2011 pt 3

In the early afternoon i met Gill up in the centre of the woods at the purple emperor "congregation" area , where the males rest in the top of the pine trees on the look out for females and give  "arial fighting"  displays!
I really never thought i would ever sit and watch butterflys in "combat flight"  flying 100ft in the tree tops, but having been told all about it , i just had to see what it was all about!

 3 hours later, we where still watching them!   arial fighting between the tree tops over a 50 m long area in the pine trees above the central clearing!   i really cant describe how exciting it actually was, but i still remember it in every detail now, 2 months on!  and cant wait to see it again next year.
i think this day was the influence for all the years butterfly shots

here is Gill shooting the emperors in the pine tops!

this shot was taken by Gill  ,  taken with canon 300mm L & 500d .  [better than any i got ]

after all the excitment ended in the tree tops,  a number of freshly emerged red admirals  "Vannesa atalanta" arrived in the clearing and started resting on the bracken fronds, one even nearly landed on Gills head!   that would have made a great picture! lol
they looked amazing in prestine condition, one of uks most beautifull butterflys but so often overlooked in the search for less common more interesting species!  which is a real shame as a few of our common butterflys are stunning!

shot with canon 5d2, 100mm L MACRO handheld

here is Gill shooting Vannesa  which you can see on the fern frond in this 2 frame focus stacked image

and here is Her  picture as shot above

many thank to Gillian for allowing me to use her images