Upper Thames today

Brother Dennis returned from his Northern exile for a days emperor fix at a private wood in Buckinghamshire today. Together with Dave Wilton, Mick and Wendy Campbell we met at 10:45am to search the wood. With near perfect conditions we managed 31 sightings over the following two hours. My impression is that iris is having at best an average year in the Upper Thames region so seeing this number in a couple of hours was a good result.

The first hour and a quarter we saw all males mostly searching for females doing typical Oak edging behaviour. At mid day we found our first female looking to lay. She was diving deep into the shade of a large Sallow.  From that point forward we encountered a mix of males and females. I have noticed this behaviour many times before on hot days where the males are more active up until mid day and then the females becoming more prominent in the hot early afternoon.