Hertfordshire & Middlesex Branch
Saving butterflies, moths and our environment
Peacock at Park Farm, Enfield. 1 Peacock at Park Farm near Duncan's Wd/Enfield Chase [TQ286984] - seen in flight & settled from 1157 to 1200 GMT - my first butterfly of the year. [Posted by Robert Mark Callf]
Brown Hairstreak egg search South Oxhey. Following last years egg rescue at Prestwick Road Meadows, we (Pete Fewell and myself) went back yesterday to see what had been done and where we could return the eggs, there were plenty of viable places, and the ones we had left were still in place. Now we're just waiting for the go-ahead to put them back. After slopping through the mud there, we went to slop through some different mud at South Oxhey Playing Fields. After a while, as the light was getting worse Pete managed to find one egg at TQ10270 93844. Today we carried on, this time a look at Fishers Field, but we had no luck there. Next to it is a former Golf Course that has a good border of blackthorn, so we set to work searching. After a few moth eggs, I finally spotted one that we had missed last year, as It had a hole and had hatched. Then I came upon one that hadn't, after a couple of rubbish photos and looking through Petes extra magnifying lens, we concluded that it was actually a Brown hairstreak egg, though a little smoother than usual at TQ12654 97292. At least we found another at a new location, we carried on till we got fed up with the cold. Roll on Spring! [Posted by Rick vickers]
My moth journey - Liz Goodyear. Maybe a better description is 'My Moth Adventure' but our next free Zoom presentation is this Wednesday evening (5th) at 7.30 - Full details can be found here: https://www.hertsmiddx-butterflies.org.uk/winter-zoom.php. [Posted by Liz Goodyear]
Merry Hill Brown Hairstreak survey. It was fantastic to have a good crew to join us for the Brown Hairstreak egg hunt. Our egg search today started with a mini egg rescue. It is unheard of for Rick and myself to arrive as early as we did but for once there were no traffic issues to pick Rick up. We took a look at stems of Blackthorn that were snipped out but laid near by the area where I photographed the last seen adult on 1st September 2024. A single egg was found on these snipped out stems which was returned by Rick to living blackthorn. A few more eggs were found in this area not far from the entrance and meeting point. We then had a quick check on the grazed blackthorn where I was fortunate to see a female egg laying last year. We came to the conclusion that without any eggs found there that any were far from fortunate. We then moved into the area where we had sighted the males last summer and looked for the double egg found and marked Saturday. From there we managed to find the majority of the eggs. Curiously this area of Merry Hill's hedge boundaries has an uncanny resemblance to Prestwick Meadows if viewed on google maps in shape and direction? In total 22 Brown Hairstreak eggs were found including those originally located on Saturday and 8 Blue-bordered Carpet moth eggs.
After the event finished Rick and myself searched the path from our starting point down to Oxhey Lane we had no success in the grazed area. Just outside the grazed area we found some promising looking blackthorn. However despite our efforts only 1 more egg was found on the bottom field nearest Oxhey Lane [Posted by Peter Fewell & Rick Vickers]
