Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, butterfly egg, Common blue butterfly, Common blue butterfly egg, Painted Lady, Painted lady egg, thistle
This Painted lady is only the fourth individual I’ve seen this year but she was by far the best, not because of her appearance, which is a little ragged around the edges, but because she was laying eggs … and I’d never seen a Painted lady egg before.
At just 0.65mm high, the egg is tiny and, in my reference book, it’s described as green but, to my eye, this one is more of a pale turquoise – the plant stem is green. And the plant is a thistle – Creeping thistle, I think, though it was a young plant with no flowers, which makes it harder for me to identify but probably more nourishing for the teeny tiny caterpillar to munch on when it emerges. Now if I can only find this exact plant again in approximately a week’s time …
And following hot on the heels of finding that Painted lady egg, today I spotted a female Common blue butterfly laying her eggs in a sheltered clearing. You can perhaps see in the photo how she is angling her body to deposit an egg underneath the foliage.
So, once again, I was able to find the newly laid egg and take some photos. According to my book, these eggs are usually 0.5mm in diameter and just 0.25mm high, so really tiny. I have no chance of finding this egg again but I’m really glad I had the chance to see it.
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That is surely a privilege, to come across a butterfly laying eggs.
When i used to scramble around more in hedgerows I used to carry a reel of brown tacking cotton with me to tie round interesting twigs and things that I wanted to find easily again. The brown made it unobtrusive, that it was tacking cotton meant it would break off easily and not restrict the plant’s growth in any way if I left it there.
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That’s an excellent idea. Thanks, Lucy.
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