Blowing the Blues around.

A walk along the cliffs and the down onto the "tramway" at Langdon showed once again how useless it is looking for migrants, birds that is, when it's windy.

There weren't many butterflies flying, and the majority of those that ventured into the air were Chalkhill Blues. At first all I could find were ones that were extremely worn, some with jagged wings and few scales left in place.

The males seemed worse, perhaps because of all the chasing they'd been doing, but some of the females were on the tatty side as well.

After a while I started to find some that were in a reasonable state like the female above.

The male above is also more or less pristine, with little sign of the wear and tear that the next few days of chasing the females will bring him.

Mothing This has been the week of the Setaceous Hebrew Character. I've never known then so numerous. In the last seven days I've caught 4981 Macro Moths of which 2230 (44.8%) have been Setaceous Hebrew Characters. I have no idea why they are so prolific this year. Lat night I caught a Maiden's Blush, enough to make an old man happy!