Followers

Friday 15 July 2016

Hairstreak Heaven and Hell. Plus Big News!!

It has been quite a week with 5 sessions in local woodland trying to improve on my Purple Hairstreak shots. This is a very frustrating little butterfly as it is pretty common but lives at the tops of Oak trees and only normally descends low down early in the morning and occasionally in the evenings. In those 5 sessions I have had 6 close encounters with them but these encounters were all too brief with only 4 of them being photographed. To be honest none of them were very good photos either. The first image here was from July 2010 which is easily my best closed wing shot.



Purple Hairstreak.

Below is a selection of my efforts this week which as I say could be better!!






Female Purple Hairstreak.



Female Purple Hairstreak.

After the hell of 13 hours plus of Purple Hairstreak hunting I have also had a couple of hours hunting what is my favourite butterfly, the White-letter Hairstreak. Unfortunately Elm trees have been having a really bad time in the Seaford area with many suffering with Dutch Elm Disease so the butterflies are getting much harder to find. Fortunately I had a message from a fellow Hairstreak fan who informed me he had a butterfly in a site near Seaford. I managed to get over to where he was with the butterfly still showing. My thanks to James for taking the time for texting me with the great news!! This made it a much easier time than the Purple!! Pure Heaven.










The beautiful female White-letter Hairstreak.

Today I was pleased to hear that 2 of my photographs have been used to promote the Big Butterfly Count by the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. You can see them by clicking on the following links.





3 comments:

  1. Well done Bob it certainly makes all your efforts worthwhile.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Frank. A nice bit of excitement!!

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  2. Very beautiful butterflies. Greetings.

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