Butterflies July – Aug 2009

Here is my collection of butterflies July – Aug 2009 that were slow enough to be photographed.

The idea of this was just to shift my focus somewhat from “what’s coming up next?” mentality.  I considered a number of potential projects.  Birds were just too Bill Oddie, I did not want that to happen to me.  Birds also have a nasty habit of being brown and moving at high speed in the middle distance.  My best hope is to try and identify the various alarm squawks emanating from them.  It did not seem to fit what I was looking for at this juncture.

Flowers were a real possibility.  I have tried it before, too much variety, too mind-boggling and rather too “girlie”.  So they were ruled out.  Tree identification was ruled out because it had the limiting factor there had to be trees and that was not always a possibility.  Also the vast majority of them can be described as “brown and sticky” as per the schoolboy joke.

Flowers and trees had the significant advantage, they did not move, or at least had limited and fairly predictable patterns of movement.

Eventually though, butterflies, quintessential insects of warmth, were going to be in the frame.

Hopefully the days of huge collections of butterflies pinned to boards are over.  My grandfather had plenty, dusty and broken, their brief lives brought to a premature end.  It was a sad collection in so many ways.  Physical evidence of a grandad’s youth falling apart behind glass.  Time eats everything.

Photographing them is more of a challenge, the killing jar replaced by microchip.  So many eluded me, many photographed were unfocused blurs.  Others that did stick around and focused were brown blobs of considerable disinterest to anything but experts.

Some ruled themselves out by just being too small.  This was a shame, but with my skillset the Skipper family looked like escapees from a roll of woodchip.  It soon was obvious this was going to be about the strutting superstars that happened to float my way and pose.

This was the year of the Painted Lady.

It made headlines, a colourful invasion, every flower and hedge was carnival.  Certainly the most beautiful and striking profusion they were ever present on walks.  Now they are flying on faded wings, worn out from the sheer exuberance of flight.  It is a melancholy sight too see them on dusty fading wings, youth gone.  I have many pictures to remind me of their myriad beauty this year, this one is my favourite.

The Peacock butterfly is a true beauty and possibly the longest lived of UK butterflies.  A potential lifespan of 11months, although 5 are spent in hibernation, seems possible.

The Red Admiral is the defining butterfly of my youth.  Everything largeish and reddish was a Red Admiral.  This year though I found it rather tricky to find one, so I was pleased to see this fellow on my birthday.  An interesting day for it to appear given its association with a youth I am now observing through the wrong end of the telescope.

The large white cannot really be missed, strong fliers, they are everywhere.  Probably more commonly known as cabbage white, a name they share with the small white.  The larva like a bit of cabbage.  Suits me if they ate every cabbage on earth, they seem to make much better use of them than we do.

The Speckled Wood.  Wonderfully marked, just a shame its so darn brown.  Where there was one, there were many.  Most certainly an insect of those shaded wooded areas.

The Comma, a very distinctive butterfly with its ragged wing shape.

The Gatekeeper, a wonderfully colourful butterfly.  I might have a tendency to muddle these with the Meadow Brown, they look quite similar with just a casual glance to me.  Consequently not many of these have been seen, but a great many Meadow Brown’s have been seen.  The distribution might not be as one sided as I imagine.

Tortoiseshell butterfly.

I had a real job getting a half decent picture of one of these.  I did not see that many and those were too quick to capture.  The markings are beautiful and that blue piping is so eye catching, it is wonderful.

Brown Argus.

I dont think it is the Common Blue, but its not easy to tell.

I have only seen these on a meadow near Fordstreet while walking The Essex Way this year.  Very fortunate to get this picture as mostly they are too small and quick to get any sort of picture at all.

Clouded Yellow Helice Form.

I followed this butterfly for a quarter of a mile or so down the banks of the River Stour.  When it first went past me I thought it was going to be a Brimstone and really wanted a photograph of it.  As I got closer, there was a possibility of it being a Pale Clouded Yellow.  These are very rare in England and would have been quite a find.  Anyway after consultation with an expert on things butterfly assigning it as the Helice form seems the sensible thing to do.

I also have images of the Meadow Brown and the Ringlet, but these are poor images, but good enough for me to claim them.

The rest of my flickr photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40131473@N06/

 

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