I had a trip up to Bracken Hall Green, aka Shipley Glen, today. I checked on the Butterfly Conservation site and Purple Hairstreak butterflies start to appear in Early July. So with the weather being warm I thought I would go and have a look for them.
As usual tapping on an image below will show it in the gallery carousel where you can see some of the photo/camera details.
The edge of Bracken Hall Green is a great place to look for Purple Hairstreak. The butterflies like the upper canopy of Oak trees and so normally are difficult to get a good look at. They are small and at the top of an Oak tree you can only see small specks flitting about. Fortunately the tops of several Oak trees in Shipley Glen are close to the edge of Bracken Hall Green and so the butterflies are at a good height for watching for them from the rocks.
Standing on the edge of the rocks and scanning the leaves of the trees with binoculars makes you feel very unsteady, but I know that if I was just a few steps further back I would feel as steady as the rocks. The most reliable method seemed to be to just look generally in the area and watch for them flitting about and carefully watching where they landed. And then pinpoint them with the binoculars.
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