Down Snitterfield Bushes

I’ve not had much success in getting out to see butterflies lately, instead I’ve been concentrating on trapping and ID’ing moths. I thought that this was set to continue with the recent arrival of baby number 2. Twitter brought me news that there were two guided walks run by Butterfly Conservation Warwickshire nearby, one in Snitterfield Bushes on Wednesday and the other near Draycote village on Saturday. As I’m on paternity leave I’d initially thought there was no chance I’d be allowed able to go. But I had managed to get well ahead on the household chores and asked if it was ok to go fifteen minutes before the required departure time. Permission granted, bag packed, escape imminent. Then the midwife rolled up, normally I would attend to the older boy while the midwife checked out the baby. Luckily this wasn’t required and I was free to go. I quickly went before any minds were changed.

I jumped in the car and headed off towards Stratford, there were loads of butterflies at the sides of the roads so we were bound to see a few at Snitterfield.

Having rushed out I was fairly poorly clothed for a wander round woodlands and meadows. Shorts and tee-shirt with bright yellow trainers were not the standard outfit amongst the rest of our party. Not being a keen follower of any sort of fashion, this was the proverbial water off of the duck’s back. The weather was pretty good, I’d just have to remember not to bash through any brambles and look out for nettles.

There were tonnes of butterflies on show. Keith and Mike, our guides for the walk, were great at telling us what they were and showing us where to look. Butterflies spotted were: Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Silver Washed Fritillary, Purple Hairstreak, Gatekeeper, Small Skipper, Essex Skipper (I think, though not 100% certain what the final verdict was on this one), Marbled White, Large White, Small Tortoiseshell, Speckled Wood and a Comma. Some moths were out too including a Hummingbird Hawk, Six Spot Burnets and Shaded Broad-Bar. It was great you didn’t have to try hard to see butterflies, it was a great trip out.

 

 

Silver Washed Fritillary (stalking a meadow brown?)

Large Yellow Underwing (Moth)

Speckled Wood

Marbled Whites

Small Skippers

Shaded Broad-bar (moth)

Meadow Brown

Six Spot Burnet (moth)

For the Skippers the area to look out for is the unsderside of the tips of their antennae. If they are all black then they are Essex Skippers, if not then they are Small Skippers (far more common). Good luck telling them apart or even getting them to sit still long enough for a picture.

Like Cinderalla I had to leave the ball early as I had promised to be home in time for lunch. Keith let me know that I would miss one of the highlights on the second half of the walk – White Admirals! Something to look forward to next time.

As a side note I would like to add that upon arrival back home I was locked out of the house and my wife and the two little ones were both sound asleep. I could see her sleeping from the rear windows of the house. I sat in the garden for the best part of an hour before getting let in. But at least I got out at all, I wasn’t expecting to see a dozen or so species in one morning. Cracking day out.

No eggs, loads of moths

Easter Sunday morning – as a boy I’d be dead keen on gobbling up the eggs, now that I’m a wee bit older I get no chocolate eggs in the morning but now I can rush down the stairs to see what moths are in the trap. By rush, I mean it took me quite a team to change the boy’s nappy, feed him, feed myself and eventually get out there. I know I’ve got to speed up this routine or they’ll cook in the summer.

Anyway there was a moth bonanza (for me anyway today). There were seven Early Greys, 2 Hebrew Characters (new species for me), a Muslin and a funny little moth I couldn’t find in the book that may have been a larger micro. The small moth flew off when I went to take it’s photo.

Above is the Hebrew Character from the side and from the front (doing it’s best impression of a mole). The moth gets it’s name from the markings on the wing, apparently just like on of the letters of a foreign alphabet. Don’t ask me to name the language – Jewish, Hebrew, Yiddish – I have no idea!

Whilst the above are next to useless for ID purposes, I’m enjoying taking some portrait style pictures of the moths. The Muslin is on the left, I think it’s the same fellow as last night, and one of the Early Greys is on the right.

After rummaging about on next to the moth trap before taking the moths off to the undergrowth I noticed this moth hiding on the brickwork next to the trap. I’m pretty sure it an Engrailed, please let me know if you think otherwise.

Early Grey 7

Hebrew Character 2

Muslin 1

Engrailed 1

Muslin Moth

After the previous evening’s dismal (and typical) moth trap catch of nil I had reasonably low hopes for last night’s haul (night of 3rd April). Luckily whilst the glass was half empty the moth trap was half full (well not quite but far from empty). After the Early Grey’s appearance the previous weekend another three of them turned up, a Chestnut appeared too and more interestingly, and a new species for me, the Muslin Moth.

My identification book reckoned that this should be around in May-June, but it also described it as being unmistakeable. I’d agree that it is pretty distinctive and checked to a book about Warwickshire moths and sometimes they do pop up earlier in the year, sometimes even late March.

Let me know if you think it’s something else!

Not Good Thursday night for moths but a Good Friday

My parents have come down to visit over Easter for a week or so. It’s a good excuse to go out and do some sight-seeing. In the morning, before heading out for the day, I’d checked the moth trap, hoping to find a few moths. None, it must have been a bit too cold and a bit too windy for them, seems like the spring has not arrived properly yet.

I dragged everyone over to Stratford to have a wander along at the side of the canal and to visit Stratford Butterfly Farm. The butterfly farm was up first as the rain had started when we arrived in Stratford. It was boiling hot in there and there were loads of tropical butterflies to see. My dad proved to be a good lure for one:

The one below was great, most of the wing surfaces were see through.

Still not much in the way of butterflies around, though there were plenty of swans keen to eat bread at the side of the canal.

Early Grey

Second moth of the year caught. This time it wasn’t in the trap but sitting on the ground right next to the trap. It’s an Early Grey, turns out that they don’t often tend to go into the traps. My wife declared that she’d saw quite a few Early Greys but had managed to dye them away!

A happy mother’s day

As noted in previous posts I’ve branched out into moths as well as butterflies, got hold of a moth trap and set out to catch some moths. Needless to say it’s not all that easy to catch moths at the end of winter. In fact I’d saw my first butterfly of the year, a peacock, a week before finally catching a moth.

And what a time to catch a moth, mother’s day… Perhaps the countryside had been stripped of flowers and the moths were looking for alternate places to visit. More likely it’s just the time of the year that they are starting to appear in gardens. Anyway I got my first moth of the year and it was a Chestnut.

From doing a bit of reading and from trial and error what I’ve learnt is that moths are a bit like fair weather golfers. They don’t like the cold and they don’t like the wind. It wasn’t until this weekend that the it’d been warm enough to tempt them out of hiding and that the wind was down enough not to blow them into the next county.

Happy mother’s day one and all!

Species count 2015: 1

Going on an egg hunt

Early January doesn’t have a lot of butterflies or moths flying around, well not many that can be easily found so when I saw a plea for help from the Warwickshire branch of Butterfly Conservation to count some eggs of the Brown hairstreak I thought I’d lend a hand.

The egg hunt was organised by the Brown Hairstreak Champion for the area: my wife asked how they pick a champion – “Is it the person who finds the most eggs?”. I like to think that that may be the way it’s done but I suspect volunteering and getting picked by a committee might be somewhat closer to the truth.

The hunt took place at Ryton Pools Country Park, a Warwickshire council park that is reasonably near my house. This is the only place in Warwickshire that there is a record of a colony of this butterfly, it’s pretty scarce in this county.  I’d not been to the park before so it was nice to see another local attraction and hopefully some eggs too– I’ll definitely be back.

How do you find a Brown Hairstreak egg? Imagine the proverbial needle in a haystack. Well your fairly close, it may well be harder – you need to find something the size of a pin head in a 100 acre country park! Luckily you can narrow that down to Blackthorn as that’s where the females lay the eggs. Once you find the Blackthorn you’ve got a chance of finding the eggs.

The butterfly places the eggs on relatively young growth on the blackthorn, it seems to like suckers and places the eggs at the junction of new growth, see picture (not one of mine sadly). You have to examine the blackthorn from bottom to about head height, checking both sides and hopefully you’ll find some. To give you some idea of how scarce they are I spent five hours doing this and didn’t find any!

Luckily I got to see some I was shown what to do by some much more experienced people who do this regularly. They showed me some they had found earlier and they found another eight or so eggs whilst I was there. No beginners luck for me this time.

In case you are wondering… the person who found the most eggs was the current West Midlands Champion, maybe my wife was right!

How’d you catch a moth?

In summer months this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Simply read a book late at night with one of your windows open and your bound to have a few of the little blighters bashing into the bedside lamp. Funnily enough that wasn’t part of the course but as a strategy it works:

1. They tend to come out at night

2. They are generally attracted to lights

3. There’s lots of them in the summer

4.They’re partial to a bit of historical fiction

So what people do is they make traps using powerful light bulbs and boxes. Egg boxes are critical too (more on that later). The moths are attracted to the light, they then fall down holes and end up trapped in the box.

There a a few decisions about what type of trap to get:

• Mercury Vapour or Actinic (mercury vapour is much brighter, attracts more moths but might be unsuitable if overlooked by other people’s houses – really bright, but more moths!)
• Mains powered or not (where are you going to trap – out in the woods or in your back garden?)

I want to catch them in the back garden and I didn’t fancy falling out with the neighbours so I went for Actinic and mains powered.

• Next decision: make one or buy one. You can find designs on the internet, such as this one: link to moth trap design. So if you have reasonable DIY skills you can build one yourself. I priced it up and found it was probably only marginally more to buy a new one from Watkins & Doncaster.  I went for the Skinner type trap.

Oh and the egg boxes… It turns out that they are quite happy to sit on the egg boxes overnight as they like the rough cardboard texture. No luck if you get the cheaper plasticky egg boxes, they’re apparently no use. Presumably free range egg boxes will attract a better quality moth too.

As soon as I start catching them I’ll start posting details. There are lots of other ways to catch moths too. If I try them I’ll write about them too.

Moths too?

As autumn came in it was clear that there just aren’t that many butterflies around. That’s a lot of time to be sitting around waiting for them to reappear. Unless I went looking for eggs, caterpillars or chrysalids I’d need something else to to do.

What looks like a butterfly but isn’t a butterfly? Well it’s a moth. I’d been sent an email advertising a course at the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust called Winged Splendour that covered butterflies and moths. 10 weeks on a Monday evening hearing about various aspects of Lepidoptera.

The course was great it covered:

• differences between moths and butterflies
• identification of species
• habitats
• lifecycles
• survival techniques

The best parts of the sessions are the start and finish: David (the course leader) brings in a selection of moths that had been caught the previous night and they get passed around so that you can have a good old look a them. David talks about the moths and gives you various details about them. At the end of each session the moth trap gets brought in to see what was caught that evening (with mixed success). It turns out that hornets sometimes get caught in traps!

So now that I’ve been on the course I’m going to be on the look out for moths as well as butterflies. In the winter you can find such imaginatively named moths as the Winter moth, the December moth, and the November moth.

Winterton Dunes - 14th September

As part of our holiday to North Norfolk we spent a fair bit of time at the beach. where we were staying was a five minute drive to the beach or you could walk there instead. I chose to walk there one day as the route passes through Winterton Dunes, which is a Natural England national nature reserve.
We had superb weather with the sun splitting the sky and rather warm temperatures. Hopes were high for butterfly spotting. This time i was not to be disappointed. On the way towards the dunes there were a lot of white butterflies and even more Red Admirals sitting on Ivy flowers or on brambles. fff
The highlight of the trip to the beach was my first ever sighting of Small Coppers and there were loads of them. I enjoyed chasing them round on the dunes, luckily they were fairly happy to pose for photos.

There were some other butterflies in amongst the small coppers. They kept leaping up from the grass to chase off coppers and others of there own sort. They were fast and I struggled to keep up with any of them. I eventually caught up with and photographed one but I have no idea what it is as it’s pretty dishevelled. I’ll try and find out what it is somehow!

Hickling Broad September

For a last summer trip I went with my family and my in-laws to Norfolk. the weather was good to us, but would the butterflies be? I’d done some reading on the internet and it looked like Hickling Broad was the place to go to see Swallowtails. Straight off there were two disapointments in the visitor centre. Firstly my membership card for the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust was not valid here, valid at 2000 odd reserves but not this one! Secondly there was a second brood of Swallowtails this year but they did not survive very long due to the poor weather in August. However there were loads of dragonflies to see and a few Red Admirals and Small Tortoiseshells to see too.
There were a few surpises too. We managed to see a common lizard on one of the jetties onto the broad and a Peacock met us at the visitor centre on the way out. Not a butterfly Peacock but the feathered variety. Overall a good morning out and worth the money I begrudgingly had to pay.

Horsey Gap

As part of my trip to Norfolk I had hoped to find Green Fritillaries at Horsey Gap. Needless to say I had no such luck as I’m not sure any fly at this time of the year. It was sunny anyway and we had a great time looking at the seals and I found a colourful spider in the dunes.

In terms of butterfly action I only saw a few Meadow Browns near to the gap. No pictures to show as I couldn’t catch them.

PS. it’s a very long walk from the Horsey Pump                     

Back to Oakley Woods again!

Once again I cajoled the family into traipsing round Oakley Woods in order to find a few more butterflies.

The aim was to find some different species, needless to say that didn’t happen but we enjoyed chasing after the usual suspects (Commas, Speckled Woods, Red Admirals and Green Veined Whites). The Commas in particular were out in force. You can see the “comma” on the hind wing of the comma on the left.

The Red Admirals pictured below were found on some Holly bushes. I particularly like the black and white banding on their antennae.

I’m sure I saw a more unusual butterfly flying higher up in the canopy but it didn’t come down to allow for an identification. It’ll keep me coming back to the wood to identify it though.

I found a caterpillar of the Elephant Hawk Moth, pretending to be a snake, when i got home. It pulls its head into its body to take on the appearance of a cartoon snake. How clever!

Trip to Twycross Zoo

 

For the last few weeks I’d not been able to get out to see any butterflies due to a combination of poor weather and other commitments. As we had some visitors who enjoyed visiting zoos we took them to Twycross Zoo. This gave me the chance to take some pictures of butterflies too. I have no idea what type they are as my book doesn’t cover tropical butterflies. You didn’t really have to look for them as they were all around, occasionally landing on members of our party. I really liked the black and white one pictured below.

Hairstreak hunt

I was keen to see a different type of butterfly again this week so set out to find some hairstreaks and White Admirals. It was a trip to Oakley Woods again as the website has pictures of White Admirals there and as there are a bunch of Oak tree my book suggests that there should be a reasonable chance of finding some Purple Hairstreaks at this time of the year. The plan was to find some oaks with a sunny glade next to them and the hairstreaks should occasionally fly down to any areas of grass. White admirals apparently enjoy brambles so I’d check them out.

Needless to say my (somewhat limited) planning was to no avail. I ended up seeing loads of Speckled Woods, Green veined whites, a silver washed fritillary (couldn’t get a photo), a red admiral and a gatekeeper. I think the winds were too high for the hairstreaks to venture out of the canopy (assuming they are there in the first place!).

Link to:Warwickshire Wildlife Trust Oakley Woods page

Daddy, I’m bored, there’s not many butterflies today!

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Wandering in Wappenbury Woods

We visited the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust's Wappenbury Woods today hoping to see some more butterflies and we certainly did: we saw a Silver Washed Fritillary, Speckled Woods, Peacocks, Large Whites galore, Small Skippers, Gatekeepers, Meadow Browns and a Red Admiral.
We started off at Old Nun Wood but found the path to be a bit overgrown for us (that's because the baby was in his carrier back pack, passable without that) there were some impressive seven foot high nettles towering over me. We retreated and went on the the main woods.
We didn’t see too much at the start of our walk, there were a couple of Speckled Woods initially but we were in a fairly dark part of the woods working our way past (and through) the brambles. But after we reached the far side and worked our way back there were many coppiced areas in which the butterflies were active. The Silver washed fritillary had a damaged wing but seemed able to fly fairly easily, I enjoy seeing them particularly as I don’t see them in the back garden.
  We saw two or three small skippers in one of the coppiced areas, and numerous dragonflies (or similar creatures). We even spotted a large moth in one of the darker bits of the woods. I thought it might have been a yellow butterfly but was sadly disappointed.
 

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