Chambers Farm Wood

July 14, 2015

I had a cracking afternoon at Chambers Farm Wood at the weekend. I had a small list of target species with purple emperor at the top so set off with high hopes.

Directions were to head for the log piles on the way to 'Five ways'-quite easy and upon arrival there was a very nice chap by the name of Dave (sorry I didn't get your surname) who told me lots of information about the place while we waited for a purple emperor to arrive.

One had been seen that morning so it looked promising.

After a bit of a wait one came down from the canopy did a few circuits at low level and eventually landed in front of us in one of its favored spots.It only stayed for about 10 seconds before flying off and despite waiting around a while longer it never came back.

There were quite a few white admirals on the wing but never landing close enough for a good shot, there was also plenty of ringlets and meadow browns along with the odd red admiral, comma and the three white species.

Just before I left I had a look in the butterfly garden and there were a couple of stunning moths in the form of hummingbird hawk moth and broad bordered bee hawk moth.

In nice afternoon light they posed quite nicely albeit they were flitting about and needed a high shutter speed to capture the detail.

All in all a nice afternoon-i'll pop back later in the summer for a crack at the hairstreaks.

Purple Emperor

Purple Emperor

Fen Bog

June 28, 2015

I had a nice trip up to North Yorkshire yesterday in the hope of seeing some of Yorkshires more scare insects.

I had a bit of a list of what I hoped to see, in the end it was somewhat reduced but still ok.

When I first arrived it was obvious that the wind might be an issue as it was gusting quite strongly up the valley.

The first butterfly that I saw was one I had come for-the small pearl bordered fritillary. At first it was quite approachable feeding on the heather and then in the blink of an eye it flew behind me never to be seen again.

After a fruitless wait, I had a walk further into the reserve hoping for some dragon flies and maybe a large heath.

However I was rather optimistic in my thoughts and in the end I only saw a large red damselfly and a rather impressive green tiger beetle.

A local chap suggested that it might be better in the shelter near the bridge, so I headed over there and sure enough there was probably half a dozen occasionally settling nicely in the more sheltered part of the reserve, and this is where I took my best shots.

I called in at Wykeham on the way back in the hope of a honey buzzard but there was no sign.