Hawk-moths - honorary butterflies

Several times this year, I saw a hummingbird hawk-moth, first in our front garden, and then, a month or so later, at Hillier Gardens. 

The picture above of a nectaring hummingbird hawk moth isn't mine (sadly!), but is taken by Charles J Sharp. 

Hummingbird hawk-moth is not the only hawk-moth species I've ever seen. In the past, I also saw elephant hawk-moths a few times (again, the picture isn't mine, but comes from this web-site).

In addition to these two species, I have seen one or two others in the past, but wasn't able to identify them then. 

Hawk-moths really appeal to me, even though they're not butterflies. So what are they really? Where do they fit?

First of all, they are lepidopterans, just as butterflies are. So they are related to butterflies. But not very closely. This phylogeny (from this published paper), based on DNA data, shows where they fit within Lepidoptera. All butterflies belong to the superfamily Papilionoidea, just above the centre in this tree, whereas hawk-moths are all in a family called Sphingidae, at the bottom of the tree. 

Another tree, from this published paper, based on different DNA data, tells basically the same story.

Hawk-moths (Sphingidae) belong to a superfamily called Bombycoidea, together with emperor, moon and luna moths (Saturniidae), and silk moths (Bombycidae), plus a few other, less well-known families. By the way, the largest moths in the world (atlas and hercules moths) also belong to this superfamily

To give you more of feel of this superfamily, here is an emperor moth (picture credit, Chris Lythall, this web-site) ...

... a luna moth (Michael Crowley, this web-site) ...

... and a silk moth (from this web-site).

To help me identify hawk-moths from now on, I ordered this easy fold-out guide to Britain's hawk-moths published by the Field Studies Council.

As the title of this blog posts states, hawk-moths are honorary butterflies to me!

Recap of 2021

On a walk last weekend, with the weather sunny, but quite cold, I saw a red admiral and a speckled wood. And those two may well be the last butterflies I'll see this season .... 

So it's time to recap the 2021 season!

Let's first look at the garden. Our garden list from last year had a total of 16 butterfly species and a single damselfly. How did we do this year? Despite planting more butterfly-friendly plants, we did not see more species. Fewer in fact: 13 in total, and no species that we hadn't seen last year. 

On to damsels and dragons, last year we only had a single individual in the garden: a large red damselfly. This year, we saw a total of five species! 

And the golden-ringed dragonfly even entered the house .....

At the start of the year, I drew up target lists of species we wanted to see this season. This because we only started looking for them quite late in the season last year (especially for odo's), so missed quite a few relatively common species that are active earlier in the year. Quite ambitious target lists: 10 new butterfly species, and 10 new damsel/dragonfly species. So how did we do?

Of the 10 target butterfly species, we saw nine, plus two species I had seen in the dim and distant past, but Irma hadn't. In order of first time seen this year: grizzled skipper, small blue, large skipper, silver-studded blue, purple hairstreak, small skipper, purple emperor, white admiral, brown hairstreak. Plus green hairstreak and dark green fritillary. The only target species we did not see was essex skipper. We may have seen it, though, as we couldn't identify every single 'smessex skipper', but we never had a positive identification of an essex skipper.

And then damselflies and dragonflies. Again a target list of 10 species, and we saw them all, plus five more! Again, in order of first time seen: broad-bodies chaser, four-spotted chaser, beautiful demoiselle, southern damselfly, azure damselfly, hairy dragonfly, downy emerald, black-tailed skimmer, small red damselfly, red-eyed damselfly, brown hawker, emerald damselfly, small red-eyed damselfly, black darter, lesser emperor. 

So 24 new butterdamseldragon species in total this year. It was so much fun seeing so many new species! We'll never have another year like that, of course; next year will be different, enjoying seeing the different species become active again, and still hoping for a few new ones. 

Bring on 2022!

Hollybrook Cemetery

Hollybrook Cemetery is behind our back garden, and if the weather is nice late afternoon, we tend to take a walk across it after work. Especially the slightly more overgrown parts of the cemetery are nice places to look for butterflies! Rather than blogging each time we go there, I thought it would make more sense to combine everything into one blog post. 

We saw a total of ten butterfly species at the cemetery this summer, the commonest of which were small skippers, meadow browns and marbled whites. 

Now there are lots of big oak trees scattered around the cemetery, and we made sure to bring binoculars when the weather was particularly nice and scan the tops of those oak trees. Didn't take us long to see the silvery undersides of the wings of purple hairstreaks! New species for us then, even though we did see one at Abbotts Wood later.

And we did see a dragonfly once: a black-tailed skimmer female landed on a gravestone, but took off again before I could take a picture.

Here the end-of-blog-post tables, indicating the highest number we saw on a single visit (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):

Hillier Gardens, one final hurrah

Although I was pretty much convinced that our visit to Old Winchester Hill last week would be our final day of butterflying this year, the weather was so nice this morning that we took the snap decision to go to Hillier Gardens for the day, for one more butterfly day. Last year, in September, we only saw four species of butterflies at Hillier Gardens, and so we certainly didn't expect to see the 14 species we saw in July this year. 

Surprisingly, and possibly due to the warm sunny weather, we actually saw a total of nine species, seven of which on a single large Buddleia bush! Included in those seven species was small tortoiseshell, which we hadn't seen at Hillier before. 

By far the most common species were brimstones, small whites and red admirals (the latter especially on and around Buddleia bushes).

In addition to the nine butterfly species, we saw a hummingbird hawk-moth, and I consider hawk-moths as honorary butterflies (even though, technically, of course they aren't). I tried to take a picture, but it was just too fast-moving and didn't stay in one place long enough. 

In terms of odo's, many common darters, as expected, but also a few golden-ringed dragonflies, which were new to us for Hillier Gardens last time.

Just before we left, I saw this heavily-damaged peacock fluttering about; it's clearly been through the war and back! To me, it really captured today almost surely being the final hurrah of the 2021 butterfly season ...

 

But we still have today's tables to present (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+)! Mentally add the hummingbird hawk-moth ....

Old Winchester Hill, one final time

This year, we've been butterflying at Old Winchester Hill earlier this month, and in July, and we also went there in August last year. When we went there a few weeks ago, we saw a record of butterfly species (19!), but among those, two species that we saw last year were standing out by their absence: adonis blue and silver-spotted skipper. Given the forecast of a warm sunny day with light winds, how about trying one final time and see those two species, which we haven't seen so far this year?

Although we drove there with sunshine, once we arrived at the Hill, there was thick wall-to-wall cloud cover, it was chilly, and quite windy .... In terms of butterflies, it was eerily quiet, just some meadow browns and a small heath active ...

Walking along the south-facing slope of the hill was so strange, not a single butterfly out .... 

But then the cloud cover broke, the sun came out, and temperature went up, and as if someone flicked a switch, the butterflies came out to play!

First the chalk hill blues ...

... then the silver-spotted skippers ...

... and then, finally, the adonis blues! The electric blue flash coming off their wings when the sun hits them at just the right angle is something I tried to capture in the photos, but I only succeeded partially.

In addition, many fresh-looking brimstones and many small tortoiseshells! So, mission accomplished, and here's the usual table (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):

And finally ... we've visited Old Winchester Hill four times now, and combining the species lists of these four visits, we've seen a total of 25 species there! This may well have been our last full day of butterflying, but we'll definitely go back there next year again.

Shipton Bellinger

Last year, we tried to find brown hairstreaks at Steyning Downland, but unfortunately, we didn't see any. We decided to try our luck this year at Shipton Bellinger, which was mentioned as giving the best chance to see them in Hampshire.

Upon arrival, we slowly walked past the hedgerows, which had many holly blues flitting about ...

... but no brown hairstreaks. Quite possibly because the weather was rather cool, and the sky overcast. 

At some point we got talking to another butterfly enthusiast, also looking for brown hairstreaks. We walked the hedgerows together for a while, and then went our separate ways again. 

Until we saw him across an open field, waving his arms at us. Turned out he had spotted a brown hairstreak in a field full of nettles and thistles, and was kind enough to alert us. And the butterfly was still there, nectaring from the thistles, and coming back to them again and again!

We only ever saw that one brown hairstreak, so massive thank-you to that (anonymous) butterfly enthusiast for alerting us to a new species! Here's the table for the day (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):

Any golden-rings home?

We first saw a golden-ringed dragonfly about four years ago, when it landed on our kite bag, clearly at the end of its life. We didn't see any last year, but saw several this year, on Southampton Common as well as the university campus. We even had one flying through the open front door into the kitchen!

But we'd never seen a golden-ring actively 'at home' in the New Forest, where its closest natural breeding habitat is. So off to Crockford Bottom we went ...

The stream close to the car park not only gave us several beautiful demoiselles, ...

... it also had a few golden-ringed dragonflies patrolling the stream! No pics of them, as they never settled, but kept flying back and forth. 

Exploring the boggy heathland up to the ponds at Two Bridges Bottom gave us many keeled skimmers ...

... as well as a few small red damsels.

As we were exploring the many gorse bushes, a large dragonfly landed, sporting a bright blue triangle at the top of its abdomen. Couldn't take a picture as it flew off quickly again, but unmistakably a lesser emperor, a new species for us! 

So the golden-rings were definitely home, and it was very nice to finally see them in the New Forest, actively hunting. Today's tables (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):