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Friday 15 May 2020

Downland taras.

It has been quite pleasing this year to see reasonable numbers of Grizzled Skippers on my local downland patch, especially as a lot of my Winter conservation work has been aimed at helping these great little butterflies, they have also expanded into areas where they haven't been seen for a couple of years.

In all the years I've been searching butterflies on the patch I have never seen the taras form of the Grizzled Skipper there despite seeing them reasonably regularly in some of the woodland sites I visit. In fact the taras form is quite a rare beast on downland sites and I have only seen one once before way back in 2011 at Offham.



Grizzled Skipper taras form  (Offham 2011).


Last week I was strolling around on the patch when suddenly a Grizzled Skipper taras flew up in front of me. I managed to get a few record shots of the butterfly before it flew behind me and I lost it. 

About 10 minutes later and around 300 metres further along the valley a very fresh Grizzled Skipper flew past me down the slope and as I approached where it had landed I was amazed to see it was a 2nd taras form. This one was even better marked.






Grizzled Skipper taras form.

The 2nd butterfly.





2nd Grizzled Skipper taras form.


1 comment:

  1. Lovely captures Bob. You're lucky to have them close to you. Been many years since I last saw one of them.

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