Saturday 1 June 2013

Small is Beautiful!

After an early morning session at Reculver where there was a good hirundine movement west including 321 Swift, 35 Swallow, 40 House Martin and c70 Sand Martin at the colony I thought I would have a drive down to Western Heights in Dover to see if the Small Blue butterfly was on the wing. As I made my way down the sun was breaking through nicely but it remained quite breezy and on arrival at the site, the wind was indeed quite strong, not ideal when you are looking for a small butterfly. The nice bit about this site is that you can park right next to the area you are looking in so leaving the camera in the car I had a brief look around. After 10 minutes of looking I had not seen anything and was slightly concerned that they may have not emerged yet but caught sight of a movement in the grass which turned out to be a Dingy Skipper. Luck was soon on my side for as I watched the Skipper I noticed a Small Blue low down in the grass. I rushed back to the car hoping it would be there when I returned and thankfully it was. I took a few shots before with a flash of its wings, it soon vanished. Hopes were now high and I found a sheltered area where in the next hour I watched up to 15 Small Blue flying around in the grass and also a few pairs were seen mating giving more photographic opportunities for the camera.




Small Blue

Many were very fresh with the males showing off their blue sheen on the upperwing. The wind started to drop off nicely and a look around the area produced 5 Dingy Skipper, 1 Orange Tip and I'm pretty sure a Common Blue flew by but was not stopping. Another successful and excellent mission with these lovely little butterflies and a few more pleasing shots. Weather permitting the next few days should have good numbers of Small Blue flying here and I also hope maybe later in the week I will get to see and photograph my first Heath Fritillary of the year.




Small Blue

3 comments:

  1. Superb little flutters Marc :-) Frustrating in that wind though I bet!

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  2. Great shots of this tinniest of butterflies Marc.

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