With the launch of the annual ‘Big Butterfly Count‘ this week I’ve an excuse to post some more photos of butterflies. These were all seen as I walked around the edge of the University of Brighton Falmer campus today, in glorious sunshine. I’ll start with the very pretty (and very numerous) common blues.
Counting them would be tricky. They are very small and emerged like dust from the path as I walked along.
Easier to count (perhaps), although they are rarely stationary for more than a moment, are the marbled whites. They tend to keep to the long grass which makes photographing them a little bit hit and miss. This is a relative hit.
There were also peacock butterflies, the ever-present meadow browns, and this (less common) ringlet butterfly.
The other very common species is the cinnabar. Actually a moth, and in this case in the caterpillar stage. They were very easy to spot on the forest of ragwort in the fields beyond the campus fringe.
The closing photo was taken towards the end of the walk, as I was heading back down from the hills. To the right you can see the curved roof of the Amex Stadium (Brighton and Hove Albion’s home), the University of Brighton campus (and my office) is just to the left of it; and in the distance is the University of Sussex. Everything beyond is part of the South Downs National Park.
Camera note: most of the photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens. The cinnabars and the landscape were taken with the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM lens.
derwandersmann
22 Jul 2014The ringlet is new to me, Words … Thanks!
I loved the caterpiggles (that spelling is to make my spell-checker go all broody), and what is that lupine-like flower in the first shot? The leaves are wrong for a lupine.
Words
26 Jul 2014dW, I don’t often see ringlets, so that one was a pleasant surprise. I’m not sure what the wild flower is. Definitely not a lupin though. I must work harder on learning what local plants we have. Some are quite scarce.
Darko
23 Jul 2014Not too many butterflies for us at the moment, I think we would need to go to Southern Interior again to see more of them. Maybe next weekend 🙂
Words
26 Jul 2014Darko, good luck with the butterfly hunt. We’ve seeing a lot more as the summer progresses, The garden was packed with them today (plus plenty of dragonflies as well.. which is a bit unusual).