Tag Archives: Purple hairstreak

200/366 Purple hairstreak

18 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in insects, nature, trees

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The key to where to locate this gorgeous butterfly, the Purple hairstreak, is in its scientific name Favonius quercus – quercus is the genus of the Oak tree – and I suspect that there are many more colonies of Purple hairstreaks living in our old Oak trees than we currently know about, as these butterflies spend much of their time unseen, high in the leafy boughs, feasting on honey dew.

200718 purple hairstreak (2)

There is a colony at Lavernock, and I’ve seen these butterflies at a couple of locations along the road that leads to Lavernock Point, but they were the only local sites I knew about. So, you can perhaps imagine my delight when, during Thursday’s walk at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, I came face to snout with a female Purple hairstreak, which had ventured down to head height, and was happily running her yellow proboscis over the honey-dew-covered leaves.

200718 purple hairstreak (1)

This was the closest I’d been to one of these lovely creatures and had previously seen neither the purple sheen on their open wings nor the yellow proboscis. I was in butterfly heaven!

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207/365 Butterflying at Lower Woods

26 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature

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On the hottest July day on record, yesterday, three mad gents and a Kiwi woman went butterflying in the noon day sun!

190726 Lower Woods (1)

Our destination was the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Lower Woods Nature Reserve, which, according to their website, is ‘one of the largest ancient woodlands in the south-west of England’. I can believe it!

190726 Lower Woods (2)

We walked most of the Horton Great Trench, one of the long grassy roads that have been in existence since Medieval times, as well as detouring in through the woods on one of the many tracks, and it was beautiful – extremely hot, but beautiful! Towering old trees edged the ancient trackway, with clearings widening out to wildflower meadows in many places along the way.

190726 silver-washed frit

The trench was perfect for butterflies. I have never seen so many Silver-washed fritillaries before, and there was also an abundance of Peacocks, flashing their brilliant colours on the bramble flowers. We spotted several Purple hairstreaks up high in the ancient oaks and then had the delight of watching one come down to the grass to drink from the overnight dew – fabulous!

190726 purple hairstreak190726 small copper

Our list for the site came to 17 species: Silver-washed fritillary, Purple hairstreak, Peacock, Red admiral, Comma, Large and Small and Marbled whites, Brimstone, Small skipper, Common blue and Brown argus, Speckled wood, Meadow brown, Ringlet and Gatekeeper, and two gorgeous Small coppers.

190726 gatekeeper190726 brimstone

We didn’t actually find our target species, the White admiral, at Lower Woods but a detour to Slade Wood on the way home produced one individual, bringing our top-spotter car-driver his 50th butterfly species of the year. Congratulations, Gareth!

193/365 Hairstreaks

12 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature

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Record shots only! Have you heard that term? Well, these photos are extremely good examples of what it means – really lousy photos, sometimes taken at long distance and then heavily cropped, often blurry, possibly adjusted in Photoshop or similar image processing software to try to enhance the features, but really only retained as proof that you did actually see what you say you saw. (So you can actually see what lovely butterflies these are, I’ve linked their names to the relevant pages on the Butterfly Conservation website.)

190712 white-letter hairstreak

Luckily, with this shot of a White-letter hairstreak, I was with another person, who actually showed me the location, so I have a witness to the sighting. From my ‘record shot’ you probably can’t even tell that the small blob in the sky is a butterfly flitting around in the top canopy of this Wych elm.

190712 purple hairstreak (1)

I did a little better with the Purple hairstreak. Again, this is a known location, where other people have seen and photographed these lovely little butterflies in recent days. The first time I visited, all I could see were small flutterings at the very top of the tall old oak trees where the Purple hairstreaks live. Luckily, on my second visit, some of the butterflies were moving around further down the tree. I just needed to be patient and wait for one to fly, then try to follow where it went – believe me, that’s not easy as they almost seem to disappear amongst the leaves and they really are quite small (a wing span of 37-39mm).

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A tale of two Hairstreaks

23 Monday Jul 2018

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First off, let me just say I have not started blogging about hairstyling: the Hairstreaks are a group of butterflies, so named because of the thin streak of white across their underwings, that usually live their whole lives in the upper canopies of various trees. This year, due to the extremely hot dry weather, their tree-top food sources have dried up, forcing them to come down to ground level for sustenance.

180723 white-letter hairstreak

I spotted this lovely little butterfly purely by chance. I was wandering along the Glamorgan Canal in Forest Farm Nature Reserve, north of Cardiff, taking photos of the Demoiselle damselflies, when something small and brown fluttered down to water level, settled briefly on a leaf, then was chased off by one of the Demoiselles (hence the poor images). The White-letter hairstreak (Satyrium w-album) can usually be found in the tops of Elm trees and suffered a severe decline in numbers due to Dutch Elm disease killing off so many Elm trees in the 1970s but it seems slowly to be recovering. Its name comes from the shape of the letter W on its lower underwing.

180723 purple hairstreak

I can’t take the credit for spotting this Purple hairstreak (Favonius quercus) – my friend Jill noticed it sitting on the woodland trail as we explored Abbot’s Wood in East Sussex last week. (This was my third new butterfly of the week!) Purple hairstreaks usually live in the tops of Oak trees, mostly in southern areas of Britain. Unfortunately, I only managed a couple of quick photos and didn’t get to see its purple-coloured upper wings.