We've been really successful with damsels and dragons recently, but only went out once to focus on butterflies, so time to refocus our attention. We picked Yateley Common for two reasons: one is because it was mentioned in our wee Butterfly Walks booklet as a prime site for silver-studded blues (which would be a new species for us); and two, because the book also mentioned several ponds with lots of odonate activity. So if the 'June Gap' isn't yet over, we can still enjoy damsels and dragons.
As we started walking, we did see a few meadow browns, and the wooded areas had several speckled woods fluttering around. Plus we saw an undetermined white far away. But then the butterfly activity pretty much ground to a halt. We didn't see any silver-studded blues, even in the area which in the booklet was specifically said to be 'silver-studded blue country'. Whereas we were expecting to see heathland there, the habitat was dominated by the three b's: birch, bracken, bramble, with only the occasional clump of heather ..... It does appear that the habitat has become far less suitable for silver-studded blues than when the booklet was published five years ago ...
Butterfly activity didn't completely come to a stop, it turned out; read on to the end ...
The three ponds we visited indeed gave us a good selection of damselfly and dragonfly species; eight in all. No new species, but it was sure nice to see several emperors, and red-eyed damselflies again, the latter of which we saw for the first time last weekend.
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