Saturday 11 June 2011

Saturday Butterfly Walk

One of the useful things about joining the Butterfly Conservation is that you can get access to some sites that are not open to the public as part of the visit/event programme.

Today was such a day and I went to some of the old limestone quarries in part of Warwickshire.  These areas are some of the few strongholds of some of Warwickshires rarer butterflies and wildlife.

At the first location today, there were few butterflies, but we did have some cracking views of 4 Spot Chasers.  This is the first time I had seen them in Warwickshire so it was  great to see them


Also there were a few Blue Damselflies which makes a change from the Azure ones we get in the garden at home.

Moving on to another site, it was great to see plenty of Bee Orchids and a few Small Blue Butterflies.  These are only found in a small handful of locations and are very tiny, making them difficult to locate in the first instance.



 Male Common Blue

 Tatty Small Blue on Kidney Vetch

 Small Blues mating

Small Heath

Kidney vetch is an important plant for the evolution of some of these species and it is the availability of that plant throughout the county that limits the availability of these species.

Martin

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