Saturday 14 July 2012

Fresh hair do

The Safari was delving in to the moth trap early this morning. A few in there but sadly no more hawkmoths.
4 Dark Arches of varying hues

Bright-line Brown-eye

Male Buff Ermine
Later we had a wander round to Patch 1 where we glad we'd smothered ourselves in DEET before we set off as the Cleggs were out in force and out for blood. The Butterfly Zone was our destination.
To the almost continuous stridulations of Grasshoppers and the chiff - chaff of a Chiffchaff we waited patiently for a particular butterfly to put in an appearance...had they even emerged yet?
Large and Small Skippers bounced around the grassheads and Meadow Browns weaved their way through the stems.


Here and there Speckled Woods cruised the lower branches of the trees and the edge of the scrub. A very bright Small Tortoiseshell shot past. Also shooting past a few times was a very speedy Brown Hawker dragonfly.
Whilst trying to dodge the attentions of one particularly tenacious Clegg we spotted a few dancing Poecilobrothus nobilitatus have a right old ballet on a stage of few Bramble leaves


A Tree Bee settled just out of range on the top of the small Elm tree in the middle of the pic.

Then at last our luck was in...White Letter Hairstreak...then two together spiraling upwards above the tree tops.
They like flitting round this small Sycamore tree adjacent to the path
But they just wouldn't come down to nectar on the Creeping Thistles like they did last year. Just one half decent record shot resulted.

Not a bad hours entertainment.
Where to next? No safari tomorrow, just an early start, a long journey ending in a traumatic hospital visit.
In the meantime let us know what's hair today and gone tomorrow in your outback

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Not a bad hours entertainment." Not at all, Dave.
I`m havin a rare hour or so out tomorrow :)

cliff said...

A good haul of sightings there Dave, well done getting the WLH's. I considered heading up to join you when I got your txt, but decided to carry on ironing my work shirts instead :-(