thursday emperor

 

19-06-25 A better forecast so I planned a coastal adventure. Still fired up from the Gosford House to Gullane trip three days ago I decided to get the train to Longniddry and instead of dropping down to the coast as usual and following it along to Aberlady I go through the massive stone arch near the station to the grounds of Gosford. It makes a nice change but there is nothing much worth a photo until I get along to the ponds past the big house. 

four-spotter at the pond

I was very lucky to see this female emperor ovipositing (egglaying) around the water-borne vegetation. It flies to a spot, and dipping its back end into the water, waits a while, presumably until it gets feedback about it being the right or wrong place to drop off the kids. Sometimes it flies quickly to another spot, sometimes it waits a long while. It rarely waits long when close to where I can get a really good photo of it, but that is to be expected. (No sign of any males at this point.)

Note the damselflies trying to aggravate the empress to move her on - they know her offspring will terrorise them and their offspring. Very like crows mobbing birds of prey when they fly through the corvids area.

very picturesque stuff going on

large red damsel

best (closest) shot of female egglaying today!
She was off again in a second.

four-spotted chaser

On the next pond over I was very pleased to see the male emperor flying circuits. I hoped to improve on the record shots I got last time. It was better weather and I reckoned my camera was up to the task of in flight shots. However things greatly improved. I tried to make as small a shape as possible (sitting down) where the emperor came closest to the pond edge near some irises, likely checking for females. At this point I was assuming it only rested high in the trees and I'd have to settle for an in-flight shot. However it flew over and perched on the broad flag iris leaves. Hallelujah! Now if only I can crawl along towards those plants before it returns to the air!

mating and laying azure damsels

emperor at rest - what a day!
(with damselfly for scale!)

the UK's largest dragonfly

I thought this was likely as close as possible however it seemed not to care about my glacial progress towards it and stayed put way longer than I thought possible. I was extremely pleased and although the view through the leaves deteriorated as I got closer, it was absolutely fantastic to get so near to an insect I'd only seen this close abroad. Even then, only on a couple of very lucky occasions. As you can imagine I took far too many shots with back-ups of back-ups. Nice to get some yellow irises in too. 

turned through 90 degrees to fit landscape format

the Chinese dogwood tree I photo-ed last time

small GVW

went to say hello to the people in the snack van 
but they weren't there today

next stop Waterston House, SOC place
just before Aberlady

small tort

there is always an amazing variety of flowers
usually quite well attended by butterflies

hover at the Aberlady memorial garden

I stopped at Margiotta's to buy a sandwich for lunch (eaten later) and a samosa to eat at the time. I decided not to do the usual diversion past Postman's Walk but to head directly across the Bridge to Enchantment. It was ideal weather for butterflies on the savannah and I felt I should give my attention over to that. 

male stonechat and juv

The stonechat family were near the place I caught up with them last time. Rather than disturb them unduly - and I doubted I could match the photos from last time - I shot a few pics and then moved on.

I had an inspiration around the place the path branches to go either left towards the West end of the beach (which we usually take), straight on heading to the dunes, or right, following the edge of the golf course up past some WW2 concrete tank traps heading towards Gullane Point. 

the juvs have a speckled front

adult female stonechat

skylark

I opted for the latter as I have had some previous successes here, including a fond memory of an all-too-brief encounter with a humming-bird hawk-moth as the trail climbs through rough tussocky grasslands next to the golf course. There are stonechats and other small birds, but it was the thought of hummers and DGFs that chose the direction. It was an excellent choice as well. No hummers, but there were several clumps of viper's bugloss being attended by 3 or 4 dark green fritillaries and they were being unusually well behaved, nectaring rather than flying off as I approached for photos. I shot loads of stills and video and even remembered to shoot some slo-mo which worked as well as I could have hoped. I have found since that it is easier to extract a still photo from the slo-mo videos; that generally the superfast frame rate means less blurring and sharper images.

in flight shots - tricky considering how fast they fly

DGFs in slo-mo
soundtrack: Cycles by Svaneborg Kardyb

common blue

large skipper

gathering nesting material

burnet moth

small skipper

painted lady

painted lady underwing

Painted Ladies in slo-mo
soundtrack: Cycles by Svaneborg Kardyb

Pentlands behind Aberlady Beach

common blue

Just in case you are thinking everything falls into my lap and I am extremely lucky, I'll point out a thing I was unable to find on several occasions searching of late: female common blues. I haven't seen one this year so far, despite intensive searches. While the males perch up high where you can see them, the females prefer to hide modestly in the longer grasses and keep to themselves. They have a far more variable plumage and can go from rather dull (purply brown) to exquisitely detailed blue upper similar to the males but with lunules round the edges.

I have been stomping around likely places and yet still have not found one. I think I saw one fly off in this area on this occasion, but it gave me the slip. I return regularly to areas I've seen them in the past and huffily march about, but with no joy as yet and we are already on the last day of June. Maybe July will bring more luck. However I admit I have had plenty luck with other stuff. Although mostly that means targetting places I have found similar things previously and combining places and weather windows and distilling many years experience with a lot of free time. I had great luck today but the weather was the main source of joy as it had all the butterflies out and about and the majority of them near a plume of bugloss. 

GVW

maybe the best condition Painted Lady this year?

burnet moth

Apparently all the 5 spot burnet moths we get in this corner of Scotland are Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet moths. I don't always bother with their full title because life is short and we don't get the plain Five-spot Burnets here so there is no real need to use their Sunday names. So from now on if I just say Five-spot Burnet you'll know what I mean. I'm glad we don't get the other five-spotters as it is approaching impossible to tell them apart and who needs more of that. We get six-spotters and they are also difficult to tell apart although if you look at the final spots at the back of the wings the 5-spotters are parallel to the trailing edge and the 6-spotters are in a perpendicular line from the trailing edge. You'd think it was easier to just count the spots but it is not always, especially as they get a bit worn.

5-spotted burnet moth

I shouted hello to this local Gullane worthy (can't recall his name but he is a great enthusiast about all the local wildlife, and does some running and swimming too) and asked was he going for a swim. He replied that he was. I was almost jealous; on such a warm day it is the ideal sport, compared to carrying a heavy camera and backpack over 10 hot miles.

last admiral of the day on the way to the bus stop

10miles in 5hrs - FABULOUS!