34C in London... Broiling throughout the Empire.
At Knepp, Neil and Kat spent the day counting Emperors over as large an area as possible. They totalled 283. Now, that's about 100 less than the peak full day count of 2018, BUT the site was far more open then - in particular, sallow thickets are doubled in height since 2018, which greatly reduces sightings of females and sallow-searching males.
They also walked Week 3 of the Knepp Purple Emperor transect. This totalled 80, by far the highest week count in a single-species transect which has been running since 2014 (the highest count in 2018 was 66).
Unless the weather collapses badly, and the Knepp Emperors get blasted away - as happened last year - 2025 will comfortably better 2018's transect tally. Then, the six week transect total was 200, we're on 164 already, with three weeks still to come...
On the debit side, as we predicted, males have stopped coming down to feed on the Knepp tracks. Both sexes are getting seriously tanked up on oak sap instead (for those who know Knepp, Patrick's Tree is providing numerous photo opportunities).
I was in Savernake, where I counted 17 along Three Oaks Hill Drive, including an egg-laying female who seemed to lay one egg on the shaded underside of a vertical leaf (too high up, couldn't see it). I'd expected more than 16 males, but they were suppressed by heat and a total calm. Nonetheless, I think that's a record count for 3OHD, though I've never counted there religiously.
One male was feeding on The Column (an 18th century excrescence), which they do in hot, calm weather. Here's The Column -
and here's Himself feeding on it (before he flew off to smash things up) -
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