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Tag Archives: Common blue butterfly egg

214/366 Butterfly eggs

01 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, plants

≈ 3 Comments

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.

200801 painted lady

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 …

200801 painted lady egg (1)
200801 painted lady egg (2)

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.

200801 Common blue egg laying

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.

200801 common blue egg (1)
200801 common blue egg (2)

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sconzani

sconzani

I'm a writer and photographer; researcher and blogger; birder and nature lover; countryside rambler and city strider; volunteer and biodiversity recorder.

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