Sunday 1 August 2010

Venus Pool - Lepidoptera day

I reckon Venus Pool is doing 'OK' at the moment. The 'odd wader or so' is the norm but thanks to the low cloud and rain, a trickle of waders on Friday produced 2 Black-tailed Godwits, 2 Dunlin, 1 Green Sandpiper, 1 Common Sandpiper and 2 juv Littleringed Plovers. Not exactly news to rock the bird world but with weekend action on the insect and eight-legged front, no wonder I'm smiling after some good 'finds'........

Let's start with Butterflies, nothing out of the ordinary here but the 'high nectar' setaside margin to the top field is literally crawling with these little beauties....

Gatekeeper





Peacock






Female Small Skipper.






The newly described Blue Skipper (oh not again, it's not April 1st!!!)






Small Copper - these make such gorgeous subjects combined with an attractive American Physaria sp.....






Green-veined Whites ensuring there will be plenty more to come.....






Plus an impressive number of Common Blues, the males living up to the part....






The underwing just as attractive.






A study of colour variation in the female Common Blue, these are basically 'brown' with varying degrees of blue colouration....

From well marked with blue






Medium blue...






Minimal blue






To hardly any blue at all......






And now for somthing completley different......