Fritham Plain & Hawkshill Inclosure

As we failed to see silver-studded blues last week, we were keen to have another go. Based on a post in the UK Butterflies Facebook group by someone who had seen them recently on Fritham Plain, we decided to try our luck there. 

Although the forecast for the day was for broken clouds and sunshine, we arrived at Fritham Plain with a grey overcast sky and occasional drizzle .... Hardly a day for butterflies!

We decided to wander around the heathland a bit, hoping the cloud cover would break, but, if anything, it just got worse ... And then, all of a sudden, a small lepidopteran flew from a heather clump and landed on another; I must have flushed it from the heather clump it was hiding from the dark cold drizzly weather. As it landed, I realised it was a blue, and, as we got closer and could see the blue-silver dots in the black spots on the wings, sure enough: a silver-studded blue! 

We walked around for another half hour or so, but the weather showed no sign of improvement, so we decided to go back to the car and decide on a plan for the afternoon. As we walked past the heather clump we saw the blue earlier, we saw it was still sitting there ... Clearly not a good day to be flying around if you're a butterfly.

Basically, given the weather, we'd been really lucky to see even a single silver-studded blue, but we did see it; a new species for us!

Back at the car, we decided to drive south, to Hawkshill Inclosure, which was also listed as a place to see silver-studded blues in our Hampshire Butterfly Walks booklet, in the hope the weather would improve while we were driving. The weather did improve, and we had about two hours where the sun broke through the clouds on a regular basis before the weather became overcast again. 

And that meant some butterflies came out to play for a while! Many meadow browns, several large skippers, and an orange butterfly which flew past too quick to identify it, and we never saw it again ... Comma? Dark green or silver-washed fritillary?? We never found out ...

Several keeled skimmers were active along the open paths ....

... and arriving at a stream, we saw several beautiful demoiselles! One even landed on the booklet I had in my hand, but it flew away again before we could take a picture.

Nevertheless, we spent quite some time at the stream, enjoying the demoiselles flying around and trying to take some picture of these gorgeous jewels.

We never saw another silver-studded blue, so, again, we were very lucky with the one on Fritham Plain .... Three tables to capture today's sightings (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):