Butterfly Dorset – ROLLING HARBOUR GALLERY

TORTOISESHELL

Published on August 19, 2023 by Rolling Harbour2 Comments

HOW THE TORTOISESHELL GOT ITS NAME

Tortoiseshell Butterfly (Keith Salvesen)

RED ADMIRAL BUTTERFLY STUDIES (WINGS CLOSED)

Published on January 23, 2019January 23, 2019 by Rolling Harbour8 Comments

Red admiral butterflies – God’s gift to amateur photographers, including myself. Colourful, prolific, simple to identify, usually within easy camera reach. All very well, but sometimes they are so busy feeding that the colourful topside is kept hidden. These images from Dorset attempt to show that closed-wing images of feeding red admirals have the interest if not the good cheer factor of the popular view. See what you think…

PAINTED LADY BUTTERFLIES IN DORSET: FIRST SIGHTING

Published on June 23, 2016June 23, 2016 by Rolling Harbour2 Comments

Midsummer’s Day is usually the first day I begin to notice painted lady butterflies in our Dorset garden. They have probably been around for a few days before then without my noticing them. So when I actually start to look out for them to test the robustness of my ‘Midsummer’s Day’ theory for the ‘first’ ones, I am in fact working with a flawed self-fulfilling hypothesis. It worked again this year, as usual… And as so often these days I only had an iPh@ne with me to record the success, with unspectacular but tolerable results.

I was hoping to get an underwing shot, but no luck. So I have plundered Wiki to get one

All photo except the last, RH with an iPhone

ORANGE TIP BUTTERFLY, DORSET

Published on June 6, 2016June 6, 2016 by Rolling Harbour2 Comments

There’s a time and place for resorting to an iPhone for close shots. The time is when your camera is not handy – possibly 3 or 4 counties away; the place is where you are right now, when an orange tip – so often a skittish species – decides to choose a plant to land on and to stay there for a while. Orange Tip Butterfly, Dorset 3

The technique for getting reasonably sharp pictures with an iPhone is this: take 20 – 30 rapid shots of the subject, holding the phone at varying distances from it until you get too close and the creature flies away. This specialist process is necessary because it is impossible to be sure what the camera has actually focused on and what the optimum distance for the shot actually is. This may be a question of distance, angle or lighting – or any combination. These were the best of them – but I also got some great detailed shots of the flowers and their stems, with the butterfly a smear of orange and white.

These images are never going to make the grade in the aggressively contested photograph section of the village art and craft show (unless there’s a special iPhone group, perhaps). But they are better than I was expecting, with reasonably sharp ‘buds’, as I think the blobs on the end of the feelers are called. That’s the first thing I look at when deleting butterfly photos…

COMMON BLUE BUTTERFLY, DORSET

Published on September 1, 2015 by Rolling Harbour4 Comments

These exceptionally pretty little butterflies were prolific in the garden in late July and early August. However an autumnal chill arrived around the 18th. A few remained, but I saw only one or two last week.

SKIPPERS (NON-NAUTICAL) IN DORSET

Published on August 24, 2015July 28, 2016 by Rolling Harbour3 Comments

Two skippers taken recently in Dorset, before the rains came. Then, as the rain has poured over the garden, so I have pored over my ‘Dummy’s Guide to Lepidoptera’ to work out what type of skipper this is. Or should I say, ‘these are’, because although the photos are not particularly good, these two creatures look different to me. But that could just be the angle of the “sun”, whatever that was. Any hints from those kind enough to glance at this woefully under-curated ‘side-project’ blog would be welcome!

STOP PRESS Mike Kelly has been kind enough to leave this comment about these two skipper species: the first one “…COULD be Essex Skipper, the antenna tips are not clear enough to be certain. The 3 below are Small Skipper”.

The same type of skipper? Or another, maybe? [PS A Small Skipper – see above]

SUMMER WHITES: BUTTERFLIES IN DORSET

Published on August 19, 2015 by Rolling HarbourLeave a comment

FIRE & BRIMSTONE: BEANS & BUTTERFLIES IN DORSET

Published on August 11, 2015 by Rolling Harbour1 Comment

It’s high summer in the garden. That means beans. Beans does not mean Heinz in garden terms. Beans means butterflies, in this case a brimstone feeding on the bright fiery runner bean flowers. This female is a pale greeny yellow; males are a more striking bright yellow.

GATEKEEPER BUTTERFLIES ARE BACK

Published on July 16, 2015 by Rolling Harbour3 Comments

This is the first Gatekeeper I have seen this year. We have had an unusually prolific season for meadow browns over the last few weeks, which in ‘closed wing’ position I find easy to confuse with gatekeepers, unless I can see the wing spots clearly. But this one was obligingly drying its wings – they are very undamaged so I assume it is a very recent arrival (in butterfly form, anyway), maybe even today.