Time to start looking for butterflies up the Welcombe

If the sun keeps shining this weekend it will be a good time to go out onto the Welcombe Hills and look for butterflies. Over the last few days I've seen the magnificent Peacock, the yellow Brimstone, Small Tortoiseshell and the beautiful Orange Tip.

I've also been out today looking for Orange Tip butterfly eggs. Here a pic taken this afternoon. As you can see the egg is minute. In close-up you can see that it's a beautiful conical shaped object with fluted sides. With luck this egg will become a caterpillar, then it will pupate, drop into the ground below and with even more luck, emerge next spring as another Orange Tip butterfly for the cycle to start all over again.

Orange Tip egg Welcombe Hills May 2016

Close-up Orange Tip egg Welcombe Hills May 2016

Orange Tips are busy butterflies and seldom seem to stay still. They are searching for mates and for their favoured plant to lay eggs on, the Lady's Smock. Look out for the Orange Tips flitting along the edges of fields and hedges just a foot or so above the ground. The male has the orange tips and the female black tips to the wings. Both have the distinctive green mottled pattern on the underside of the wings. If you find Lady's Smock (clue: it prefers damp places so the bottom of the slope from the reservoir towards the hotel is good), gently examine the flower heads and you may be able to see the orange coloured egg. Only one egg is laid per plant and if more than one is laid by different females, only one caterpillar will survive to pupate. That's because they eat competitors - though this may be for moisture rather than simple competition.

The Tortoiseshell and the Peacock like to bathe in the sun. Often they will find a patch of bare ground where presumably they benefit from the warmth of the ground below and from the sun above.

The Brimstone is a truly beautiful butterfly and a distinctive yellow (brimstone being the ancient name for sulphur which is yellow of course). It also has a distinctive shape rather more exotic than most of our native butterflies.

The Common Blue will be emerging around this time. Last night sitting on the benches at the top of Rowley Fields I'm sure I glimpsed one but it flew off behind me into the wood and I lost sight of it.