...
How has BH been affected by last "summer"?
So, fellow streakers,
Just interested to hear how you folks feel that this year's egg counts are comparing to recent years? Have just spent nearly 4 hours out at our main Lincolnshire stronghold today in ideal weather for egg-searching. Having visited a couple of areas where I would usually expect to find good numbers of eggs, I have to say that I am slightly disappointed with my findings...
Numbers do seem to be substantially down, perhaps not unexpectedly following one of the worst butterfly summers in recent years. Is anyone else experiencing reduced numbers this winter?
Be interested to hear from fellow egg-hunters across the land.....
Ryton Egg Update
Its that time of year again! Ive only managed a couple of egging trips so far this month but things are looking positive for the Brown Hairstreak at Ryton Pools Country Park which adjoins Warwickshire's Butterfly Conservation reserve, Ryton Wood Meadows. So far, we have found over 80 eggs in the park itself, and another 5 on an adjoining lane. This beats the total found there last season! However, i wont be happy until i find at least another 65 eggs in the vicinity (i drive a hard bargain!). Plans are in progress for additional blackthorn planting at the park and ongoing management to increase blackthorn suitability for eggs.
Check out our Ryton Wood Meadows reserve page on the excellent new Butterfly Conservation website...
More streaking in Worcs
Today's Thursday streak saw us head back to Morton Stanley Park in Redditch where we had recorded eggs for the first time last winter. The main aim of the visit was to undertake a blackthorn survey of the park and feed in management recommendations to the site owners Redditch Council but, of course, we couldn't resist searching for eggs at the same time. The park contains considerable amounts of blackthorn but much of it has not been managed for many years and is now generally too...
EGG HUNTING IN IRELAND
The Burren Conservation Volunteers are an inspiring group of volunteers actively working towards the sustainable
management of the Burren. On Saturday 17 November I was invited to give a workshop to the group and talk on how the volunteers could contribute to the work of the National Biodiversity Data Centre where I work. I mainly spoke on recording and entering records online but also of a number of schemes that we run including the Irish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. A few of the monitoring...
23 eggs on a single sucker
A pleasant morning out egging in the sunshine today lead to a find of 23 eggs on a single small blackthorn sucker at College Wood in Lincolnshire. I am sure many fellow "eggers" will be familiar with this phenomenon - you search an area of apparently suitable habitat, maybe finding a few eggs here and there, then suddenly you find a tiny bit of blackthorn that has been favoured above all others by a mass egg-lay! This particular sucker was growing in a typical sunny, sheltered situation alongside a ride junction, and was about a metre in height. Of the 23 eggs, 12 were laid as "doublets" - ie 2 eggs side by side in the same fork.
Several questions spring to mind - were all 23 eggs laid by the same female (If so, she has committed a significant percentage...
More on Ash Dieback
Another very interesting article about Ash Dieback disease from Patrick Barkham in The Guardian yesterday, plus a statement from The National Trust.
Also, the ASHTAG app is now available for free, for both iPhone and Android phones, or you can submit photos of suspected Ash Dieback disease on the websi...
New Lincolnshire colony confirmed
Sunshine was streaming through my bedroom window as I woke this morning, so I decided it was definitely a good day for a trip out to the Lincolnshire Limewoods for a spot of egging. Our most exciting find last winter was the discovery of BH eggs at College Wood - a new site from which we had no former records. I was keen to see if the apparent colonisation last year was indeed establishing here. With a fair bit of foliage still on the blackthorns, I was delighted to find 68 eggs in a couple of hours along the SE wood edge, where last year we found a total of 52 eggs over the whole winter on this section. The butterfly has clearly had a succesful breeding season at this new colony, despite the poor summer. Good signs that our Lincolnshire streaks continue to go from strength...
Ash Dieback Disease
Some very worrying news about the spread of the Ash Dieback disease in East Anglia today. Some excerpts from the article, plus additional links below.
++ ASHTAG app launched to prevent spread of devastating tree disease.
++ Deadly disease threatens to devastate ancient woodland.
Ministers have confirmed that 100,000 trees have been destroyed to try to prevent the spread of the deadly ash dieback disease. A ban on the import of ash trees came into force on Monday and an expert tree disease taskforce has been established.
The Chalara fraxinea fungus, which causes Chalara dieback - also known as ash dieback - has already killed 90% of ash trees in Denmark.
The disease was first spotted in the UK in February, at a nursery in Buckinghamshire, and was subsequently identified...
Streaking in France
Well around about now I would usually be commencing the annual winter egg search in the Lincolnshire Limewoods, but this year for a change my first egging session took place in South Brittany during a long weekend visit to my father's house some 20 minutes north of Vannes (19th-23rd October 2012). The habitat here is a mosaic of copses, tree lines and fields, with occasional larger woods. Bracken and Gorse is common, as is heather - it has a distinctly heathy feel - and blackthorn is...
Thursday Streakers Club
At 10am yesterday, Mike Williams, Hugh Glennie and I met at Grafton Church car park to mark the start of the TSC for 2012/2013. It had been decided to conduct this first search of the season in the vicinity of a well known assembly tree near the hamlet of Cowsden in Worcs.
This tree was discovered 5 summers ago and has consistently been one of the most reliable trees known for the Worcs colony. However.....the extensive blackthorn on the lane it sits on, and in most of the surrounding fields, has always been heavily flailed so finding winter eggs has always been a bit of a struggle. In addition, summer 2011 also yielded very few adult sightings in the tree. Nevertheless, a reasonably large group of us went there in January,...
Let The Egging Commence!
Egg searching in Warwickshire has now officially started! After confirming the presence of a master tree bordering Ryton Wood Meadows (RWM) and Ryton Pools Country Park (RPCP) during this years flight period, i was dying to start searching the blackthorn in the immediate area. The SE facing blackthorn in RPCP was first on the list yesterday and after Simon Primrose and I conducted a thorough search of a small area of young/semi-mature blackthorn, we found 18 eggs, including 1 on the NW facing side. Only 6 eggs in this area last year so this is great news. In fact, i was so pleased, i even performed my happy dance when i was sure no one was looking. We also made a point of pulling down some branches with heights over 3 metres as an experiment to see how high the females might have...
It's not all over 'til the fat lady sings
Still hanging on in Worcs as well with at least two different females seen on Sat at Grafton Wood. By the condition of them it may not be the last sighting either but still a long way to go to beat our previous record of 22nd October set in 2008.
Thanks to Dave Williams for the photo....
AUTUMN EGG SEARCHES
Spurred on by the successes of the previous
week: Gill, Geoff and I returned to the Redditch
area on Wednesday last week in an attempt to find more eggs that would add new grid
squares to the Brown Hairstreak distribution, as well as finding eggs over the
Worcs border into Warks.
We began by searching an area of extensive
blackthorn within Redditch town, close to
where the adult female had been reported in August, later making our way down
to Studley Common NR in Warks.
Redditch appears...
Hanging On
Brown Hairstreaks are still hanging on in West Sussex, with recent sightings of females on 4th October at RSPB Pulborough Brooks (Andrew House) and on 6th October at Henfield (Richard Roebuck)....
Rachel Goes To Prison!
As Gillian has worked so hard to create this wonderful resource, I thought it was about time I shared my first brown hairstreak egg hunting experience!
It was in January of this year that I joined a group at Bullingdon Prison led by David Redhead, having been inspired by Patrick Barkham's 'Butterfly Isles'. I found an awful lot of specks and white blobs before finally discovering my first egg. Is it any wonder when you consider that they are about the same size as the queen's nostril...
Ashmageddon?
Noticed this in the Daily Mail today about importing diseased ash trees from the continent. A few excerpts from the article:
All ash trees are threatened by a fungus called Chalara fraxinea. It is marching through the continent, and the effect has been devastating. First reported in Poland in 1982, it has already wiped out 90 per cent of Denmarks ash trees.
Now, the fungus has crossed the Channel. It struck for the first time in February, when a shipment of diseased ashes from Holland were found in a Buckinghamshire nursery.
Then, in June, it killed another imported ash tree in Leicestershire. Nurseries across the country — and any other owners of ash trees — have been asked to check for giveaway blackened leaves on recently-bought trees.
Should the disease take root here, the...
Eggs Found on Worcs/Warks Border
It has been known for some time now that the Brown Hairstreak are gradually spreading east from Worcestershire into Warwickshire. Unfortunately, the expansion isn't expanding as fast as we'd like it to. The county boundary runs along a busy road and is bordered by dense woodland and built up areas in parts. Last season, we found quite a few eggs close to the border in Worcestershire but only a few actually inside Warwickshire. Our main breakthrough was finding 19 eggs just inside Warwickshire near a place called Cookhill. However, i estimate around 8397589178975894 deer are in residence there and much of the blackthorn with eggs on was browsed. Visits to some promising looking ash trees during the flight period unfortunately yielded no sightings what so ever but we all know how elusive...
Welsh populations
Pembrokeshire is out on a bit of a limb and is often largely overlooked, but it has to be remembered that this part of the UK is one of the three principal strongholds for the Brown Hairstreak.
Of course, unlike most other parts of the country, the weather is comparatively unreliable, but this can unearth observations that would otherwise not be recorded, such as the butterfly's cold tolerance levels.
The principal site in these parts is the coastal location at West Williamston, a lovely spot...
INDIVIDUALS OR SIGHTINGS?
My last two visits to Steyning Rifle Range on 20th and 22nd September
produced 6 and 7 female Brown Hairstreak respectively, bringing my 2012 total
for the site to 52. To give some idea of how prolific the species is here, this
is a lower count than in previous years; 2012 being a modest or even poor
season in most areas.
One of the questions I'm regularly asked is "how do you know whether
you are counting the same butterflies more than once?" Clearly it is
useful to know whether we are recording...
Hello All
Well I am new to this blog but have been interested in Brown Hairstreaks since seeing my first one at Noar Hill six years ago. Hampshire is not overly blessed with large numbers of sites and the two keys ones are at the extreme east and west boundaries of the county. However there have been intriguing reports in the Hants BC annual reports from one or two other locations.
I have seen good numbers Shipton Bellinger in the west where they do seem to be spread over a fairly large area. The other site in the east is of course Noar Hill - the numbers here seem to fluctuate but are generally quite low and seemingly restricted to a small area - the reserve itself. I have searched for eggs at NH over the last three winters finding none one year and a max of 23. This is similarly reflected...
Brown Hairstreak ebulletin
For those interested in a more detailed account of Brown Hairstreaks in Worcs (and now W. Warks) a regular email is distributed in my capacity as Brown Hairstreak Species Champion for West Midlands Butterfly Conservation. Past copies can be accessed via the branch website www.westmidlands-butterflies.org.uk or if you contact me direct I can add you to the mailing list. The series goes back to January 2005 so plenty of historic data available and we have just published number 96 earlier this month. The current issue provides an account of the Brown Hairstreak open day at Grafton Wood last month, news of this year's Big Ash Bash and dates of our forthcoming egg hunt days this coming winter. The latter are open to one and all and any...
9 Brown Hairstreak at Grafton on the 15th
I met up with Simon Primrose at 0930 on Saturday at the Church at Grafton Flyford for another Brown Hairstreak search. The weather was just about ideal: blue sky with only a few fluffy white clouds, and not much breeze. As we walked down though the fields towards the wood we checked one potential Ash on the way. There was something there, either a very tatty male BH or a Purple Hairstreak. It was so frayed that it was impossible to tell for certain, so we decided to move on. We went and checked...
Magic Day Saturday
Today was a golden BrH day despite failed sightings going back eight days at known sites.
At outset today I had the forlorn hope of a maybe across a range of Bucks - Oxon border sites. However 10.30 am rang the ding-dong-BrH bell with a double-header male and female atop an ash and adjacent shade-bound elm right on the County boundary here in sunny Buckinghamshire - Oxon borders (one foot in each!). It was an estimated mere 15 degrees at the time.
Further forays to another three regular BrH sites delivered mixed fortunes topped by another glorious female Brh at 1.30 pm on a fence-post in the Piddington area and a couple of eggs located after a brief search at Piddington Woods at approx 3.30 pm.
More questions you guys and dolls: why are some days seemingly totally...
Brown Hairstreaks in captivity
Attached photo of captive BrH pair in cop. I had bred them through from the egg stage and was amazed to find them one morning as a mating pair. My interest is the bahaviours of butterflies, BrH in particular. In my view there is very little authorative information available in the literature - e.g. egg- laying cycle; pupal preferences; adult feeding (honeydew on ash?!) and lots more.
I have attempted to breed individuals initially from the egg stage with some success and subsequently through the...
Brown Hairstreak larva image
.jpg)
This is really a test image, but shows a 3-day old first instar larva which was taken in April 2011 when I raised three Brown Hairstreaks from egg to adulthood. This process was photo-documented in diary form on UK Butterflies, but with Gillian's assistance I hope to produce a full report with observations and photos on Ash Brownies soon.
Vince Massimo...
Mapping The Brown Hairstreak In Sussex
Here's a link to an excellent article by Michael Blencowe, reproduced from ‘The Sussex Butterfly Report 2010 (Issue 3, Spring 2011)’. Well worth a read. Click on 'Read More' to activate the link.
http://www.sussex-butterflies.org.uk/downloads/BrownHairstreakArticle_MichaelBlencowe.pd...
Brown Hairstreak at Shurnock
I met up with Simon Primrose at 1115 today (13th) at Shurnock for my first ever Ash Bash. I've never seen or attempted to see the Brown Hairstreak before, so wasn't building my hopes up too much beforehand. There is a very fine line between standing in a field staring up at a tree looking for butterflies, and just standing in a field staring up at a tree! Well, thanks to Simon's expertise by 1200 it was standing in a field staring up at my first ever Brown Hairstreak. I even managed a few fuzzy...
Brown Hairstreaks in Redditch and elsewhere
In recent years, the Brown Hairstreak has been steadily moving eastwards in Worcs and for the first time last winter we found eggs within the town of Redditch. This year, we thought we would have a crack at enlisting the support of the public at large in trying to find adults and produced a press release and poster asking members of the public to keep a look out for the butterfly. The idea clearly caught the eye of at least two local papers who picked up on the story and did a write-up including photos of the upperside of the butterfly. Within a few hours of publication, we now have our first definite report of a sighting within the town which is great news and a whole new area to search for eggs this coming winter!
This...
Sussex Still Going Strong
Although the female Brown Hairstreaks are now appearing later in the day (12.30 pm rather than 11.15 am), I was left in doubt that the betulae season is still going strong when I visited Steyning Rifle Range today. Of the 7 females I saw, 3 were in mint condition and didn't appear ready to lay eggs yet, making only brief sorties from the master trees to relieve the boredom that this species must suffer spectacularly. As always the action petered out rapidly soon after 2.00 pm and at 2.30 pm, despite warm and sunny conditions, I watched a female go to bed in an ash tree, finding a secure perch on the top of a shaded bud before bringing her antennae parallel and entering the Land of Nod. This butterfly is shockingly lazy.
Steyning is an excellent site...
Bits and Bobs
First of all, let me start off by saying a huge thank you to everyone who has signed up to contribute to the blog so far, and also to everyone who has emailed me with positive feedback. Things have gotten off to a great start and will hopefully continue with more updates, even though the emergence is now past its peak. In the Midlands area, most males are looking fairly sorry for themselves but there are still some fresh females around. Let the onslaught of egg-laying begin!
Ive started working on the gallery which i think is going to be a reasonable size once its completely finished. Im looking in particular for photos of individuals/groups egg searching and ash bashing so please get in touch (eorlingas@gmail.com) if you'd like to contribute any.
Just a reminder for anyone...
Eggs at Shurnock, Worcestershire
Following the failings of 12 successive site visits over the past three weeks to get a close up sighting of a Brownie, Monday 10th September saw the 13th attempt which was also to end in failure. Many of these trips did take place in the afternoon which seems to prove the point that adults are most likely to be seen in the morning, although some sightings at the top of Ash trees have been made in the late afternoon/early evening around 5pm.
Following the latest disappointment, I resorted to egg searching at a site near Shurnock which last year produced a fantasatic result of around 300 being found. On Monday, I started at one of the Master Trees and worked along the main hedgerow for a distance of some 400 yards (I don't do metric). Surprisingly, no eggs were found near to the Master...
Big Ash Bash 2012
Went out early yesterday morning despite the cool, breezy conditions (and also despite having had only 4 1/2 hours sleep after watching the tennis!).
Visited the potential new assembly tree on Blaze Lane, just to the SW of Redditch town, in which I had seen a definite female BH on Monday 3/9. Weather was 70% cloud, cool, breezy. Observed for about 30 mins - nothing seen, of any species.
Left there and drove to Naunton Fields NR (a Worcs Wildlife Trust reserve). A number of adult BHs had been seen there last year and a reasonable number of eggs had been found during the autumn/winter. Weather was still mixed and nothing was seen in the 'main bank' of trees that had supported the adults in 2011. Met Pete Seal whilst there but we then split up to search different areas. I searched...
Glory Days
Being presented last night with a free ticket for a visit to the Olympic Park today placed me in a dilemna this morning. Should I join the mass sporting fraternity in their hour of need or maximise another beautiful sunny day in adding to my tally of Betula with no medals in prospect. Of course I did the latter! This weekend resulted in two very contrasting BrH days. Betula seemed very active at the three sites I visited on Saturday. I managed to confirm five individuals, four atop the ashes and one glorious female at ground level. Another beautiful morning today Sunday gave me high expectations of further sightings but alas it was not to be. All seemed quiet on the Betula front despite visiting three further regular BrH haunts.
This experience is not a first for me but an example...
A Good Couple of Hours at Grafton
Having just returned from a week in Dorset and with 1500+ photos to sort through I couldn’t help but notice that Brown Hairstreaks had been showing well during the past few days at Grafton Wood. With the weather set to stay good over the weekend, I mentioned it to my son Chris, and as he had the day off his work today (Saturday) we decided to bimble over for a look.Grafton Wood is only about 45 minutes drive from our house in Solihull and so we left just after 10.30am in glorious sunshine. Nearing...
Shurnock Success
There was plenty of activity yesterday morning at a brand new Brown Hairstreak site discovered just last year near Shurnock in Worcestershire. Despite arriving at the known master tree at around 9:30am, it was still quite chilly and the sun was rather hazy. No doubt all the Brownies were hiding at the top of the ash, trying to warm up! I was there for a good 45 minutes before I saw the first one take flight. Between 10:15am – 11:30am, I estimate I saw between 4-5 individuals (most likely males),...
Ash Brownie Debut
Ever since i first laid eyes upon the brilliance that is The Purple Empire, I'd thought about creating something similar for the Brown Hairstreak. Regular Hairstreakers are usually kept busy throughout the entire year, whether it be egg searching, caterpillar hunting or trying to spot those elusive adults in the blackthorn and ash trees. With so much activity going on, i thought that documenting sightings, observations, photographs and trip reports from around the country in one place would be an excellent way to keep up to date with all the latest Brownie goings on.
The aim is to have lots of contributors who will post their own entries on anything Brown Hairstreak related. If anyone would like to do so, please do not hesitate to email me (Gillian Thompson) at eorlingas@gmail.com....
