Sun and showers

 The weather this week 17 was changeable: warm, with occasional heavy showers. Wednesday was chosen as the day for the walk around and it started warm, windy and pretty well overcast but as were finishing in Fames Rough (Sections 3 & 4) the heavens opened for about 15 minutes. As we headed for the shelter of the trees we saw butterflies still flying in the downpour – possibly heading for the nearest shelter just as we did. The trees kept the worst of the rain off us until it stopped and within a few minutes the sun broke through, enabling us to resume our transect.
 
We saw our first Purple Hairstreaks of 2021 in the oak trees alongside the path of Hillwood Field (Section 7). Since we started the transect in 2015 we've only seen PHs for a single transect per summer: the exception to this was 2017 when we saw them for the three transects walked between mid-July to mid-August. Here's hoping they're still around for our next transect. 
 
We also had our first sighting of the newly emerged Chalk Hill Blues on Stagbury (Section 11).
 
The heavy shower probably reduced the number of butterflies for the second and sunnier half of our day's count but the numbers we saw were spread quite well across all of the sections. So, less than half of last week's number, not too bad a count considering the 'iffy' conditions.

Count details:
109 Meadow Brown
  35 Gatekeeper
  14 Chalk Hill Blue
  13 Marbled White
    9 Ringlet
   6 Small/Essex Skipper (3 Small, 2 Essex and 1 unconfirmed)  
    5 Purple Hairstreak
    4 Dark Green Fritillary
    4 Silver-washed Fritillary
    3 Small Heath
    3 Green-veined White
    3 Peacock
    2 Common Blue
    2 Comma
    2 Large White
    1 Clouded Yellow
 Click on butterfly names for more info.
Total: 215 butterflies from 17 species.

Essex Skipper

​Survey by Brian Gardner and Graham H  submitted to Butterfly Conservation (UKBMS). 
​Report and pics by Brian Gardner.
​Click on pics to enlarge.

Silver-washed Fritillary