Butterflies

Brimstone – Gonepteryx rhamni

A Pierid

Orange Tip – Anthocharis cardamines

Black-veined White – Aporia crataegi

Red Admiral – Vanessa atalanta – a Nymphalid

Nymphalids like this have only four legs for walking. They have cryptic underwings, especially when the forewings are completely hidden inside the hindwings. Red admirals migrate to England from the continent of Europe.

Small Tortoiseshell – Aglais urticae

Peacock – Inachis io – another Nymphalid – very dark underneath

Painted Lady – Vanessa cardui – another migrant Nymphalid

Silver-washed Fritillary –

Argynnis paphia – This butterfly flew quite well with a badly damaged wing. This proportion of damage would be much more serious in a larger and faster flyer, such as a bird or an aircraft.

The Gatekeeper –

Pyronia tithonus –

a medium sized Satyrid

Speckled Wood –

Pararge aegeria

Ringlet –

Aphantopus hyperantus

Graylings – Hipparchia semele and Brintesia circe

The grayling, a mountain butterfly, may be found on Cleeve Hill in Gloucestershire, and in the mountains of the north. On the continent of Europe you can find numerous relatives, including the magical Brintesia circe. Although really brown and cream, it looks almost black and white as it dances in the sun. But if you want to photograph it you have to be quite observant. When it settles, it vanishes, yet it is usually in full sight. The underside is camouflaged well, and the butterfly makes full use of this. When landing on rocks it may sit near some dark features or a gap in the rocks – anything to minimise the chance of its being seen.

When it lands, it shows the eye spots at the tips of the fore-wings. A peck at these by a bird will probably mean lost wing-tips but an escaped butterfly. After some seconds these spots are suddenly snapped out of sight. The give-away shadow of the butterfly may be minimised by the butterfly leaning right over away from the sun until it may be almost lying flat on the ground, so that it covers the shadow. It may also lean so that the sun lies in the plane of the wings, so that the shadow is only as large as its body. In one picture below a grayling has chosen to sit over a gap in some rocks to make its outline less obvious. Here are some B circes and another species of grayling, Hipparchia sp, also not found in Great Britain.

Some of these behaviours are seen in other Satyrids also.

There is a colony of Hipparchia semele on a hill near Cheltenham, far from any others. On a hill near Geneva, at the edge of a wood, Brintesia circe fly in a small area. Very often, a species occupies a tiny area which is susceptible to change. If the change is too great, the species may disappear from that place.

This butterfly is found in very small localities for a short period only. It is not easy to photograph, being skittish. The males have greatly reduced forelegs, like the Nymphalidae. This butterfly is found in some very small habitats in Gloucestershire. Life which is dependant on very small habitats must be precarious.

Chalkhill Blue – Lysandra corydon – a Lycaenid

A beautiful butterfly of chalk and limestone. As in many blue butterflies, only the males are bright blue, reflecting the blue of the sky. The females are somewhat variable, most being brown, but some having a blue suffusion. The undersides of some blues are also variable in pattern. The last butterfly has wing damage. Butterflies can fly with much worse damage than this. A small colony of chalkhill blues lives about ten miles from Gloucester. The area is about forty metres by thirty metres.

Several instances of apparently isolated colonies of butterflies have been mentioned. Because butterflies can fly, these populations are almost certainly not isolated on an evolutionary time-scale. Yet the the beginnings of a new species must be as unremarkable as this, though of course isolation by huge mountains or expanses of water would make divergence far more likely.

Even if a species is destined to lead to a new family, or even to a larger classification group, nothing remarkable would be seen at an any stage by anyone living, though if you found a few examples of a species on a remote island it might make you think. And yet, apparently, it didn’t lead to anything before the time of Darwin and Wallace.

Photographing butterflies requires much patience. You may have to walk or jog for a long distance and then hold the camera steady enough to get a good picture. Butterflies can be infuriating when they repeatedly look like settling but don’t do it. The Wood White – Leptidea sinapis – is especially good at this. If there are numerous butterflies of the same species it is easy to be distracted by a "better" one. Choose a good one and stick to it. Obviously the best time is just after they have emerged, and are undamaged. Early in the day many insects may be sluggish, or even unable to fly because of the low temperature. Then it is easier to photograph them, though the low light level may be a nuisance.

The next two pictures illustrate the difficulty of getting a sharp focus all over when the plane of the wings is not parallel to the plane of the film. The wing-tips are quite fuzzy when this happens. Both tips of the Painted Lady are fuzzy, as is the left one of the Peacock. Using a flash-gun can help, by allowing a smaller stop to be used, but care is needed to avoid unnatural illumination. Actually you might allow fairly unnatural lighting if it leads to a reasonable picture.

Excellent wildlife site – http://www.rdg.eurobell.co.uk/quoditchbutterflies.html

Insect photograph webring – http://nav.webring.org/cgi-bin/navcgi?ring=wtpphoto;list