A windy St Margaret's at Cliffe

When I arrived at the Dover Patrol memorial it was still rather misty, cool and windy. As the afternoon progressed it got a bit warmer and drier, but the windspeed didn't drop at all, making butterfly ID and photography very difficult.

The first butterfly I saw on the path towards Kingdown was a tattered Marbled White, Melanargia galathea (L.). I think maybe these are coming towards the end of their season, as I haven't seen them elsewhere in the last few weeks.

There were also a number of Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers scattered by the wind. The Meadow Browns when put up fluttered frantically across the wind and then crashed down close to the ground in amongst the grass.

Here is a very tattered Gatekeeper, probably a female - from the lack of the large brown smudge in the centre of the forewings.

There were Large and Small Whites as well, and here is a Large White male.

I took a couple of shots of the Everlasting Peas and to my shame when I looked the photos I realised I had missed two moths and even a silver-spotted skipper!! Poor observational skills:

Bumblebees were in good numbers despite the windspeed. One species fairly commonly seen was the Red-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus lapidarius, and I was really pleased to see my first definite Queen this summer (there was also a probable at Queensdown yesterday). The Queens are huge compared to the workers:

I checked the antennal segments on the left antenna (the right one was missing oddly enough) and there were only 10 flagellar segments as expected in a female.

I also checked that the  rear leg had a pollen basket

As in most sites I've visited recently, there were good numbers of the Sothern Vestal Cuckoo Bumblebee, Bombus vestalis, and many of the ones I've been able to sex have been males, as this one is also. You can see the smokiness of the wings blocking the colour of the knapweed head behind that is characteristic of cuckoo species. You can also see the hind of yellow where the white tail hairs are separated from the black hairs of the front of the abdomen characteristic of vestalis, and the partial yellow band on the front hair of the abdomen that is often found. The rear legs are generally hairy as characteristic of male Bombus.

Here is the same bee extending out its front leg to fend off intruders - a characteristic attitude when approached by other bees or other insects:

While photographing the Bumblebees, the camera also picked up the tiny flea beetles on the Knapweed:

There were also good numbers of the Hogweed Bonking Beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, paired up on the Hogweed flowers,

And a single Oedemera nobilis on a Field Bindweed flower,

There were a very good range of flowers on the clifftops. Here is a harebell, Campanula rotundifolia (L.): A delicate perennial with graceful, slender stems, usually in clusters, rising in height from 4-15 in. The stems can be weak so that the entire plant bends over. Its rounded, basal leaves wither early while the narrow, stem leaves remain. Blue-violet bell-shaped flowers hang singly or in clusters along the top parts of nodding, thread-like, mostly unbranched stems that grow in small patches. The nodding, bell-shaped, lavender flowers are borne in loose clusters at stem tips.

The genus name, from the Latin campana (bell), means little bell. The name Harebell may allude to an association with witches, who were believed able to transform themselves into hares, portents of bad luck when they crossed a persons path. In Scotland, another old name for this plant was Witches Thimble. The characteristics of this perennial vary considerably, depending on habitat conditions, ranging from Scottish hills to Kentish chalk downlands. Harebells can be seen in many areas of the UK, being found in a wide range of habitats including heaths, dry sandy banks, and grassy places on poor shallow soils. They thrive on both acid and chalk soils.

This is Field Scabious, Knautia arvensis, and I think most of the plants I saw today are actually this species. I do also need to keep my eye out for the Small Scabious, Scabiosa columbaria, which is superficially very similar.

Clouded Yellows at Queendown

Garden bumbling

I spent a few minutes in the back garden this afternoon and tried to take e few close-ups of Bumblebees. There was one very tired and worn Red-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus lapidarius (L.), and a rather more lively Common Carder Bee, Bombus pascuorum.

This is the (dying?) Red-tailed Bumblebee photographed. Here is a reasonable shot of the hind leg and the pollen basket:

This is the Carder Bumblebee photographed. The antennae have ten segments in the flagellae, and the hind legs are clearly modified into pollen baskets, each with just with a few pollen grains here (in the second picture), making this one a good sized worker. This one is in quite reasonable condition.

The Bumblebee tongue is amazing:

Here you get another view of the ancillary mouthparts:

Queendown the third - another small copper and Helophilus trivitattus!

Guidance on telling the Brown Argus, Aricia agestes, from the female Common Blue, Polyommatus icarus, can be found on this website, http://www.glaucus.org.uk/BflyBlues03.html.

Here are a couple of heavily cropped shots of what is definitely a Brown Argus, probably a male, bacuse the spots on the forewing upper don't quite reach to the front of the wing:

My photos do seem a bit soft at the moment. I'm not sure whether this is because I'm using a small aperture, or because of the high ISO, or because of the high degree of cropping I'm having to do. So I'm going to up the lens in order to reduce the amount of cropping required. I'll also consider buying a Canon lens to see if the quality of the lens makes any difference.

I find it truly remarkable that this butterfly was once really quite restricted in its distribution and threatened in the UK. Luckily it seems to have benefited greatly from warmer temperatures and is now able to take advantage of a wider range of food plants in newer parts of the country.

I noticed two apparently male Brown Argus behaving oddly. The front one, smaller, and a lot less worm was apparently displaying mate refusal signals. He/she was quivering his/her wings and had pointed the tip of the abdomen vertically upwards in what I believe is known as the mate refusal posture, normally exhibited by mated females who "wish to be alone". The two remained in this sort of position for about a minute before the rear one flew off.

It then took about 10 seconds for the front one to stop its quivering and posturing, and then it eventually flew off as well.

Where am I going wrong? Were they both really males, as I interpreted the wing patterns, in which case why was the front one exhibiting mate refusal posture? Is that normal behaviour for males to do?

Or was the front one actually a female, with the orange spots not quite reaching to the front of the fore-wing? In which case how accurately can one really identify gender in Brown Arguses, including that of the rear one in these photos?

This butterfly, on the other hand, is a female Common Blue, from its white edgings to the orange spots on the rear wing, the whitish spots on the front of the forewing, and the lack of a clear dark mark in the centre of the forewing. Confirmation can be obtained from the spots seen fairly near the body on the underside of the forewing.

The Brown Argus is on its second brood, by a couple of weeks. It should be egg-laying and I would hope to see females fluttering about at low level looking for lush shoots of Rock Rose, Helianthemum nummularium plants to lay on.

As yesterday, there was one gorgeous Small Copper, Lycaena phlaeas, to be seen. This one was actively feeding on Marjoram, Origanum vulgare (L.), probing different flowers on one head very busily. I could not tell whether this was a male or a female, although I would have thought it might have had more rounded wings, making it a female. The subspecies found in the UK is Lycaena phlaeas eleus, first defined by Fabricius in 1798 in Germany, as opposed to the type named in Sweden. Amongst other things he described the antennae as brown, white ringed, with a black, oblong club, tip rust-coloured [although the base of the antennae actually looks white on the underside, on the basal half, as seen in the second picture]. Its really nice to see the copper hairs on the frons, and the dark chocolate brown of the eyes.

The primary larval foodplants are Common Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) particularly on calcareous soils and Sheep's Sorrel (Rumex acetosella) particularly on acid soils. Broad-leaved Dock (Rumex obtusifolius) is also used very occassionally - possibly when the sorrels are affected by drought. "Forewings dark brown with a bright reddish yellow discal region with large black spots, grey beneath with a reddish orange discal region with (small?) black eyespots. Hindwings greatly notched and generally twin-tailed, dark brown, with a bright band with short teeth, reddish yellow, grey beneath with minute black spots and a faint reddish yellow outer band" (Fabricius, 1798).

Today I must have seen hundreds of Meadow Browns, Maniola jurtina, all of which seemed to be feeding on the abundant nectar sources available. Here is a nice female on Wild Rosemary:

Queendown Warren full of butterflies and bumblebees

The East end of the reserve has a fantastic piece of meadow, covered in butterflies and bumblebees,

Queendown Warren

A late afternoon trip up to Queendown Warren produced good numbers of bumblebees and the common Brown butterflies, but was disappointing for Chalkhill and the other Blues.

Firstly were the Cuckoo Bumblebees, and here are two versions of Bombus vestalis or Bombus bohemicus, the first version with only one yellow thoracic band, and the second version with a thinner band in the middle of the abdomen.

Here is the first version. If it is Bombus vestalis, it is probably a fairly worn specimen, as the yellow patches are now quite small and indistinct. These are all the same bee. The wings look a little worn and tawdry, and not strikingly brown, although clearly brown tinged especially on the veins. This would all fit with a Bombus vestalis that has been around the block a couple of times.

Frustratingly once again I cannot tell for sure whether it is a male or a female! If I had to make a decision I would think it is a male vestalis in which the antennal segment A3 is much shorter than the A5, but I really cannot be certain. I think this only applies to males, and is well seen in one of the photos on http://www.bwars.com/index.php?q=bee/apidae/bombus-vestalis.

This is the second version, with a slight yellow band on the abdomen. Again these photos are all the same bee. In this individual I would have said that the wings are rather browner than the bee above.

Lullingstone on another warm Sunday evening

At Lullingstone there is a good patch of Ragwort and Creeping Thistle between the first woodland clump and the golf course. Today I checked it for butterflies and bumblebees in particular. The first butterflies I saw were Gatekeepers, Pyronia tithonus and Meadow Browns, Maniola jurtina. 

On Gatekeepers, the small white spots are found on the darker areas of the underside hind wing and there may be four or five it seems to me. This looks to be fairly sharp across the whole insect, at f/20, but the photo does suffer from noise at ISO 1000, with double sharpening, which seems to be the main cause of the noise problem.

This is a slightly unusual head-on view of the same insect:

And here is one of the Meadow Browns, on a Creeping Thistle flower. Its a male, with two spots on the hind underwing:

And here again is a head-on view, but this time of a different insect, a far more tattered male. It is rather difficult to tell how many spots it has for sure.

and here is a third male, with just a single spot.

As I left the flower patch, I saw a Peacock butterfly, Inachis io, at the back of the patch - It looked huge in relation to the Gatekeepers and Meadow Browns, quite a stunner!

and just about then I was overflown by a Spitfire!