Old Winchester Hill

Old Winchester Hill is a site we visit every year, and often multiple times during the butterfly season.  Two years ago, we saw 19 species there, the highest number of butterfly species we ever saw on a single day. 

So back to Old Winchester Hill we went again, for the first time this year. 

Partially cloudy, but the sun came through regularly, and the butterflies were flying around. Of course, all the usual suspects were active.

When the sun was out the 'chalkies' came out as well in good numbers! As well as plenty of brown argus and common blues. But no adonis blue ...

And we also saw a few small tortoiseshells.

Maybe the highlight of the day: a single dark green fritillary posing nicely for pictures.

No silver-spotted skippers, though; like for the adonis blues, it may just have been a tad too early for them. 

Focussing totally on butterflies, we weren't even thinking of odo's, until a single golden-ringed dragonfly made its appearance.

So how did we do in terms of number of species? We broke the record of two years ago: 21! And that's after seeing a record number of damseldragonflies yesterday; two records in two days!

Here's our longest ever butterfly table (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):