Praying for Purple.

 After spending the day walking around Abbots Wood, Alice Holt with blanket cloud cover, things looked pretty grim searching for any Purple Emperors. It was my second visit here on both occasions meeting up with Mark Tutton. We covered the areas we were familiar with which had been good in previous years. At around 16.00 we met up and it turned out Mark had seen 2 males around an hour before very briefly, one putting the other up nearby over a sunny oak along a ride. As we spoke the sun came out and at last I had a one second view of a male which circled and then vanished. We both spoke to a young lady taking her dachshund for a walk who asked what we were looking for, we told her Purple Emperors. She immediately told us she had seen a male Purple Emperor on her window sill at the nearby convent at around 13.30. We had no reason to doubt her as she had seen it well and was very interested in butterflies. This all leads me to believe that there were a lot more around than we were able to see. They were probably just sitting motionless high above us waiting for a bit of sun to get them going. It does look like it could be a poor year not helped by the atrocious weather, I am hoping things are late with next week seeing numbers go up. All will no doubt be revealed once we get some settled sunny conditions. Tomorrow onwards could see things improving .