WildlifeTring: Butterflies At Last

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Butterflies At Last

After weeks of relentlessly grim weather Saturday dawned bright and sunny, and I decided that it would be a good day to look for butterflies. I started out at College Lake but a cold breeze was whipping across the lake and there was not a butterfly to be seen. My initial excitement started to wane, but a couple of Cuckoos calling in the distance and a hunting Hobby cheered me up, so I headed for Pitstone, where a little cutting at the base of a sunny chalk bank, once part of a quarry, always proves good for butterflies in Spring. The site was warm and sheltered and as I had hoped, full of activity. Dingy Skippers were all over the place, chasing each other over the short grass, and with a little searching I found a beautiful pristine Grizzly Skipper nectaring on a Buttercup. I stumbled across a Green Hairstreak, quietly resting on a leaf and watched fascinated as a small but ambitious spider lassoed one of its legs with silk and made a hopeless attempt to drag it away. This little scene kept me amused for a while until the Hairstreak grew weary of being pestered and flew away.

Green Hairstreak Callophrys rubi, being lassoed by a spider, Pitstone (12/05/12)

I was leaving I bumped into some friends and decided to spend some time at Pitstone Fen, helping them with a butterfly survey. Wandering slowly round the fen we found a Small Blue, more Dingy Skippers and a few Green Hairstreaks. After this pleasant little interlude I headed to Ivinghoe Beacon to hunt for Duke of Burgundies and soon found a few of these beautiful little jewels in their usual sheltered gully. After so many days of terrible weather it was really heartening to feel the heat of the sun on the back of my neck and be surrounded by butterflies again.