Silver Studded Blues at Prees Heath 10 th /17 th June

It is now 10 th  June, the Cornonavirus lockdown restrictions have been partially lifted so i can now drive any distance for leisure/exercise  purposes.  Except Wales and Scotland.  so still cant go into Snowdonia .  But the Silver Studded Blue butterflies  should be emerging now at Prees Heath in Shroposhire . So with very light winds and a cloudy forecast i have driven down to see if i can photograph a few.
These butterflies quite often emerge in huge numbers, and unlike most species don't actually move very far so they are always to be seen flying low around the Bell Heather

It didnt take long to find them ,  they are roosting in the heather,   all males which are blue underwing, whereas the females are brown.  They always emerge first.

It is an old airfield , the Bell Heather has been seeded on the old runways over recent years to increase the habitat for these fairly rare butterfly.

 I have found a nice fresh male , probably emerged in the last 24 hours ,  placed it on a nice colorful dead  heather stem .  held in a small clamp.  i can now lie down low to shoot with a nice clean background .

                                            Shot with Canon 5dmk2  100mmL macro lens
                                                                f7.1  iso400  1/125 th

                                               Beautiful colours of the dead heather stems.

All the butterflies seen so far have been males ,  but after half hour of searching i have found a newly emerged female still on the heather but low down out of sight , it is cloudy and fairly cool so the males are not flying around looking for the females yet.

                                                            Female Silver Studded Blue
                                                                 f8  iso 400  1/125 th

                    Male sitting on a grass stem ,  5dsr  100mm L macro on a tripod for this one.
                                                                  f7.1    iso 500  /1/80th

It is now just gone 10 am , and the sun is breaking through the clouds and the butterflies are becoming more active.   opening there wings to the sun .

                                                               One last image of a male .

A week later on the 17 th i have come back to see if a bigger emergence has taken place , we have had quite a few thunderstorms over the last couple of days so that may have had an impact on them.  It is a bit breezy today, but much warmer than last week when i arrive and immediately i notice how much more active they are, the numbers have increased dramatically also with plenty of females spotted already , considering i only found about 6 last week.   Unfortunately most of the males are roosting but take flight as soon as i get close !

A Small Heath , there are plenty of these flying around and this one stayed motionless to allow a 4 frame focus stack.   

                           A picture clearly showing the difference between male and female.

                                                      Female on an old heather flower
                                             5dsr   f14  1/5 th sec  iso 100   tripod used

         One of dozens of females that i have found , all the males seem to be very worn already with scales missing all over the wings.

                                                        5d mk2   100mm L macro
                                                           f7.1  iso 400  1/60 th

It is just too warm now , they are all too flighty but i have just shot this beautiful female on a heather flower to finish with.   I have not found a single butterfly emerging with the ants which is disappointing.

Silver Studds at Prees Heath june 2019

Today I have driven to Prees Heath in Shropshire to photograph the Silver Studded Blue butterflies, one of my favourite species.   The weather has been alternating warm and cold with no settled warm spells so the butterflies may be late this year. Walking from the car park there are plenty of thistles in flower among other small flowers,  but no sign of any Silver Studds!   they would be very easy to see if a big emergence had occurred.

After walking almost the entire length of the main runway stretch I have only found one newly emerged male .    Its not looking good today.

I have now found a small patch of Bell Heather with a couple more males perched.  The light is quite nice this morning but its getting increasingly breezy now which is going to make it quite difficult to get good sharp images.

                                                              5dmk2   f5.6  iso 250

                                                                          A closer view.

The runway which has been seeded with Bell Heather a few years ago to hopefully increase the butterfly's  population.

I have found a newly emerged male and placed it on a nice flower which is held in a clamp on the ground where I can get a nice clean background.

                                                                 f5.6  iso 100  1/125 th

I have found another and moved it onto another flower to shoot with back lighting, this is a handheld focus stack of 6 frames     f5.6  iso 250    1/10th

Now I have put the mpe-65 macro lens on to shoot a couple of high magnification images ,  both are focus stacked 8 frames.
This one you can still see debris on the eye from where the butterfly has emerged from its chrysalis.

These are shot lying on the ground with the butterfly placed on a suitable stem with a pale leaf placed directly behind to give background colour, without that the flash falloff would give a black background with is not very natural.  The lens barrel is resting on my left hand to keep steady while taking the multiple frames each with a slightly different focus point to combine in Zerene stacker software which increases the depth of field in the finished images.

Back to the flowers near the entrance  now and looking to see if I can find a female,  after half hour I have managed to find one, perched deep down in the Heather.

                                                     This is the best image I could get.

                    A male, clearly showing the colour difference to the female in above image .

               One last image with the beautiful heather flowers surrounding this male silver studd.

Its been a hard morning shooting , but have managed some nice images...………….

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.