Chasing the blues away

It is hard to stay down when you are with such an irrepressible butterfly basher as Fizz. She gets so much joy from bouncing about in fields it is infectious. Our favourite walk at the moment is around the farm fields. The grass is so thick and taller than she is,  she has to “bounce” just to get through it but she seems to love it.

So my apologies for my absence over the last couple of days but I have been a bit under the weather. Feeling better today, I have a lot to catch up on.

Fizz didn’t get a walk yesterday, I couldn’t face it. Looking out of my window the whole of the UK was “under the weather,” it must have been pretty frustrating if that was your holiday day.

It is raining steadily again today but I have a plan that if nothing else I will make a video of just how wet a dog can get.

So here are my Blues. Little glimpses taken over the last few days when we did get out.

 

Female Common Blue Butterfly

After yesterday’s post about the male of the species Emily asked how  you tell the sexes apart and as it happens I did photograph a female yesterday as well as the male and it is raining today so here we go.

This was our male Butterfly.

This was the female taken at the same time as the picture above.

 

The amount of brown on the upper side of the wing can vary quite a lot but I think that this colour is pretty typical this next picture is another female taken several years ago. It is about the same colour.

This last picture is the very same species, female Common Blue Butterfly taken just less than two weeks ago. This one was exceptionally blue and perfect, I don’t see many like this.

Anyway since I started following Emily’s blog (where you can learn a lot about Bee keeping) I have revised my plan to keep Bees in my kitchen cupboard when the Butterflies go  and I am now considering Spiders 🙂

Common Blue Butterfly (Male)

The long hunt is finally over, I got the little beggar this morning. Did I say little beggar? I meant beautiful little Butterfly, the one that I have spent so many fruitless hours chasing round this bl**dy field.

Now I am complete. I have got everything that I ever wanted and I will never have to go through this again. What a sense of relief. I am finally a very happy man.

Isn’t that a beautiful Butterfly?

Oh no!

Fizz! Fetch me my Butterfly Restrainers. I need you to tie me up!

I have just seen a Clouded Yellow. Here we go again….

Does this look like a Chicken?

Hi,

I have had another frustrating day and once again it has been the Common Blue Butterflies that have been the cause of it.

Now you would think that a famous naturalist like myself would know the answer to the question posed in the title above. Nevertheless I followed this little Butterfly around for two hours in the sure belief that she was about to lay an egg. (Without any real success, I should add)

It would have been a great picture.

Okay let me explain why I mistook this pretty little insect for a Chicken.

Female Common Blue Butterflies spend their days nectaring, warming up in the sun and laying eggs. The primary larval food plant is Bird’s-foot Trefoil. They seek out a plant and then lay a single egg on a leaf. This female was settling on Bird’s-foot Trefoil giving it a good investigation and then crawling onto the leaves and wiggling about some, She was also making clucking noises, I think. Then she would move on to the next flower and do the same again. It made sense to follow her.

The trouble was Bird’s-foot Trefoil is such a little plant and there was so much grass. It was just very, very hard to see exactly what was going on and to photograph it.

So you tell me what you think is going on here?

Look closely at the position of her abdomen (Tail end) and the concentration on her face.

That is a Chicken laying an egg. In my world that doesn’t cut it, you have to see the egg emerging and deposited on the leaf. So it is frustration for me but I shall try again.

Some good things came out of this.

“Wise” people often pose the question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” and they feel secure that nobody will ever be able to answer that one. I know and in nanoseconds you will too.

Did you see any Chickens in this post?

Eggs were being produced millions of years before Chickens were invented 🙂 🙂 🙂

Take care. I have a great unidentified wildflower coming up, you will have to be very clever to get this one. 🙂 (I don’t know what it is)

The Beautiful Game

Common  Blue Butterfly, Polyommatus icarus

Getting these pictures today makes me very happy (There’s more to come). There were a few of these butterflies about today and a few good open wing shots that I just couldn’t get but it is probably best to leave something for tomorrow.

Strangely I found them just above an emerging Six-spot Burnet. There must be something in the air

 

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..