Herself...

Here is Herself, egg laying today in a privately-owned wood in NW Bucks. The photo needs some photoshop work but in the original you can make out the egg coming out of the abdomen. She was laying remarkably low down, on both narrow-leaved and broad-leaved bushes, including on 2m tall sucker growth growing out of a ditch.


Here's the freshly laid egg. The egg changes colour after a couple of days -

And here is Herself, a veritable minx at the best of times -

On Wednesday 29th I visited Savernake but struggled to see lone males in three of the seven top territories I searched, suggesting that the butterfly was only just starting there - it is a 'late' site. Did anyone see it any earlier????

Tomorrow, at dawn without breakfast, I head for Fermyn Woods for a long weekend, staying in the cottage in the woodland meadows. I wont be able to blog direct but will send verbal reports via a Kindred Spirit... I seek Iole, nothing less...