Another Sixer!

I had a wonderful time sitting in a ditch last week, all in the name of our favourite Hairstreak! Richard Hadfield had found a rare cluster of 6 eggs at Grafton Wood on the annual egg hunt at the end of December and of course, i had to photograph them! Easier said than done though. They were about 15cm from the ground in a ditch flooded with water. Where better to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon??

I apparently provided some good entertainment for the rest of the group though - whom i might add opted to stay nice and dry at the top of the bank and laugh at my horribly freezing wet foot and soggy welly. Wimps! Follow my adventure below, photographs courtesy of West Midlands branch Brownie Champion, Mike Williams.

We later trekked into the wood itself to re-locate a nice quad of eggs to photograph. By the time we arrived, we were a bit muddy, having almost slid down a long muddy track on our backsides. This was turning into quite an adventure! The light was waning at this point so its possible i may go back and do it all again. I clearly enjoyed this experience more than i thought! :)

AN IDIOTS GUIDE - HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH EGGS IN A DITCH

Please note: The author will not be held responsible for soggy socks, wellies or drowning.

1. Put waterproof trousers and wellies on. A wetsuit, mask and snorkel may be required if water is deep. Maybe even armbands. Lifejacket?

2. Descend the depths and tentatively ensure you're not going to sink up to your neck in mud. It is worthwhile having someone on standby incase they need to rescue you (after rolling around laughing at your predicament).

3. Move the blackthorn into position and tie the stem in place if need be.

4. Set up the tripod and camera, ensuring it doesnt sink. Probably best to hold onto it actually, just incase. You'll need a dedicated macro lens, like the Canon EF f/2.8 100mm L IS - highly recommended!

5. Use a remote shutter release if possible to reduce camera shake. If you're multi-talented like me, you can take photos via the remote with your teeth.

TOP TIP: Dont be stupid and kneel down in the water like i did or you'll get a welly full - waterproof trousers or not!

6. Try to get your lens as close to the eggs as possible (depending upon your lens' closest focusing distance) to ensure maximum magnification. You can crop the shot a little later on.

7. If the eggs are low down and shaded, try and place something like a green leaf in the background to lighten the shot and add a bit of colour. This will also eliminate any nasty dark out of focus background blobs.

8. Take your time setting up the shot. Ensure its exactly how you want it before taking 500 photos. Turn off AF (and IS if using a tripod) on the lens and use LiveView (if using a Canon SLR) to zoom in and manually focus the eggs.

9. Take plenty of shots and keep reviewing them to check composition and make sure they're in focus. If need be, adjust the focal ring to take shots of any out of focus eggs for focus stacking later on.

10. Be sure you're happy with what you've taken before moving away as any knock to your surroundings will completely ruin your cameras positioning and focus on the subject. You'll then have to re-position, re-compose and re-focus everything.

11. Once finished, get your camera to safety (most important thing) and then scramble (or swim) out of the ditch.

12. Empty wellies if need be, squeeze out soggy socks and let your mates take embarassing photos of you.

13. If required, get someone to assist you with putting your wellies back on - preferably someone you trust not to push you back into the ditch for laughs.

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Hatched/Predated Egg Photos Required

Across in south west Wales, we started an occasional BH newsletter a few years ago and next edition is long, long overdue! A promised item is a photo gallery of hatched, predated or other currently non viable eggs. If anyone has any photos which they believe to be of such eggs, particularly where you believe you know the cause, do please let us know, so that we can try to achieve this little project. (I think David Redhead is in touch with Jim Asher, but all other contributions welcome). Richard Smith
 

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Rushbeds Wood Egg Search

Dave Wilton led our latest organised UTB egg search at Rushbeds Wood here in Bucks yesterday Sunday 15th Dec 2013. This is a well established site and with its adjacent Laplands Farm reserve holds a strong colony of BrH. A team of 12 tackled an approximate 400 yards of hedgerow locating 75 eggs in 90 minutes. Dave felt this result was 'about average' for the location over recent years. This successful count contrasts with my difficulty in locating adults here in 2013 - both on several of the regularly occupied 'assembly trees' and indeed on the excellent stretches of blackthorn hedgerows which are abundant particularly at the Laplands Farm end of the site. Perhaps significant numbers of  BrH females on their characteristic sedentary perches have had the last laugh at my expense this year, in seemingly producing an abundance of eggs without showing themselves, in readiness for next year? Time will tell?

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First 2013 Sussex Eggs

This afternoon (3rd December) I went walking on the downs around Chanctonbury Ring, parking at Washington and walking up through the disused chalk pits. The briefest of searches located my first Brown Hairstreak eggs of the winter, only a couple of hundred metres from the car park. I've always found them here in previous years, but it usually requires some effort to locate just one or two. Today I found 7 in under five minutes, including 2 pairs. It's too early to draw any conclusions yet, but this does look quite promising for a good 2013 crop.
After reaching the Ring I soon found my target for the afternoon, a handsome Great Grey Shrike.

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So far so good

Interesting to read Tom's posting of record numbers of eggs at one of the Upper Thames sites.  Can't claim any record from our egg count at Grafton Wood on 17th November but numbers were up on the previous year on all three sections of blackthorn that make up part of our core count area which is an encouraging start.  We also seem to be getting a lot of multiple egg clusters this year for some reason with several trebles and even a couple of quads already recorded!  Our next planned session at Grafton is our Xmas/New Year special on Sun, 29th December when mincepies and mulled wine will be on offer as well as Brown Hairstreak eggs.  We meet outside Grafton Church for 10 am and all are very welcome. 

In the meantime, the Thurs Streakers are continuing their efforts to search out new areas, monitor known sites and respond to requests from landowners to survey specific areas.  A very productive recent visit was to a National Grid sub-station where we found almost 100 eggs.  National Grid were very pleased at this news and have written an article with our input for their in-house magazine.  Many of these site visits result in management recommendations being made to owners and hopefully, at the end of the day, some better hedgerow management measures being adopted.  With changes in agri-environment schemes reducing the amount of grant aid likely to be available to farmers, we are having more and more to rely on developing good relationships with landowners and finding ways other than money of achieving change.  Developing good links with other public bodies including local authorities is an important part of this, as is trying to make better links with businesses.  We were very pleased to receive a donation of a further supply of blackthorn whips from Wychavon Council recently which we have planted out in an area of public open space where our previous planting of whips earlier in the year had produced 21 eggs.  We are hoping that some of the blackthorn left over can be made available to local farmers and other landowners. 

Encouraged by the great success of last year's Hairstreak Jelly, we also have followed up on the discovery of eggs on farmland near Redditch by persuading their farm shop to stock Brown Hairstreak ale in the run up to Xmas which we hope will be another way of getting across our important conservation message to the wider public.  Talking of which, don't forget to order your own Xmas supply (www.fromthenotebook.co.uk).  All bottles sold result in a donation to Butterfly Conservation.  More Worcs updates as and when.           

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Record egg numbers today in Upper Thames!

A team of eight members recorded a total of 81 BrH eggs in just over 2 hours at a regular site near the Oxford bypass today.  It was a site record, the previous highest total being the 54 found there in 2009. It will be interesting to see if other egg counts have similar results?
Tetrad results this autumn (where at least one egg has been recorded) is almost complete for the 116 tetrads where either eggs or adults have been located since 2009. Egg finds have been relatively easy despite leaf fall being late this year.
Dave Wilton is doing an excellent job as BrH Champion in co-ordinating the recording and mapping of the species in Bucks and Oxfordshire.

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Positive early news from Worcs

Although it is early days, we seem to be finding plenty of eggs in Worcs this year and, where we have comparative data, counts are up.  We have already added 3 new 1km squares to our distribution map which is also encouraging.  We shall know better after this coming weekend when we undertake our first egg hunt at Grafton Wood.  If any Streakers from elsewhere want to join us, we meet at Grafton Flyford church at 10 am on Sun 17th November (the day after the national AGM where West Midlands Butterfly Conservation are having a stall).  Once again, we had an October sighting of an adult at Grafton Wood on 15th which is pretty late but not our latest which was 22nd October back in 2008.  Reserve Manager and Branch Chairman John Tilt managed a photograph which can be viewed on the Grafton Wood blog.  Particularly good news has been the discovery of eggs at the site of our Community Planting Day earlier this year (see previous posting) with four of the whips holding Brown Hairstreak eggs.  Wychavon Council are providing us with another 100 plants which we will be putting in later this month.

Finally, I thought people might enjoy this photo

.of a Ladybird eyeballing a Brown Hairstreak egg which one of our local champions photographed in his garden.  We awaited the outcome with bated breath but the good news is that the egg survived its ordeal and remains intact.  The fate of the Ladybird is less certain as it has disappeared.  Perhaps its house was on fire and it flew away home - we shall never know!  More seriously, evidence of what actually does predate Brown Hairstreak eggs seems in short supply.  We often come across half-eaten eggs in our searches but have never caught the culprit in the act.  Does anyone have any more information on this?

 

More updates later.

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egg searching methodology

Did anything ever come out of the egg-survey methodology meeting earlier in the year?

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Very late tatty sighting

I spent five successive but unsuccessful days at Bookham Commons mid-August looking for brown hairstreaks. (OK, I did see male and female through binos up a sycamore).
I then went to the French Alps for three weeks.
On my return, I had given up the possibility of seeing one. Then, on 7 Oct at 2.45pm, a dull day, while looking for speckled woods (or anything), I was surprised when something brown fluttered by. Brown hairstreak didn't even enter my thoughts. Small copper or moth maybe?
Well, here she is. Only one-and-a-bit antennae, pretty tatty and it was pretty sluggish, to the extent that I could touch it. It stayed around half an hour. A great late treat!

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Shop early for Xmas

 

 

Be the first to order the new West Midlands Butterfly Conservation calendar which is hot off the press.  In A4 landscape format in full colour, the calendar features all the winners in this year's West Midlands branch photographic competition.  The calendar is priced at £8 (£15 for two) and can be ordered from 8 Working Lane, Gretton, Cheltenham, Glos GL54 5YU.  Cheques should be made out to Butterfly Conservation West Midlands branch.  Copies can also be purchased from the West Midlands branch stall at the national AGM in Swindon next month. 

It couldn't possibly be a WMBC calendar without a photo of a Brown Hairstreak and amongst the winning photos included is a shot by Simon Primrose taken at Grafton Wood.  All proceeds from the calendar supports the work of Butterfly Conservation in the region.

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