graylings on the McIntosh ridge

 

12-07-25 Today was a straightforward task. Photograph graylings taking off to show their upper wings. Since they almost always sit with their wings firmly closed you rarely get to see those uppers. I was looking to improve upon the last composite effort (4 shots combined in the same image, below) which was okay but the subject had damaged wings (I only realised later) and so I felt there was room for improvement.

this from 2 weeks previously
could I do better?

small heath

Mary came along too for a constitutional. She has not been able to run for quite some while and even struggles to walk without pain more than a few miles. Uneven ground can be worse than flat which limits what we do. I'm glad we haven't booked any trips away that require walking fitness. Hopefully things will improve before the annual trip to Tenerife at the end of the year. Not, as yet, booked.

There's nothing like hunting a specific target to ensure you see none of that species. (Usually snakes.) However, a few years ago our friend Mairi discovered a decent number of grayling butterflies on a small ridge just above Hutton's Section at the start of the climb up the top of the crags. We christened it the McIntosh Ridge. It is susceptible to any kind of breeze but on less windy days not a bad place to stalk Graylings. They like to sit on the rock and almost disappear, their cryptic underwing patterns blending very well into the type of rock the crags are made of. Hutton's Section (currently unavailable due to the pussies at HES putting up ugly barriers and fences, for no justifiable reason) shows where molten dolerite has intruded into sedimentary rocks causing buckling of the strata.

grayling - how they look at rest

So the plan was to find a reasonably lively grayling that didn't mind my company a few metres away. Set the camera to pre-burst mode at a shutter speed of around 1/4000th of a second. On a bright day this means the ISO takes up the slack. I recently saw an expert assess my camera in a youTube video where he checked for noise and found that it can go up to around ISO 3000 without any sign of significant noise.

in flight

I did not scrutinise the graylings for wear and tear. There were not so many I could choose. I just moved about and worked with whatever I came across. Another tip is to start what you hope is going to be a successful sequence with the subject at the bottom of the frame. If it is pointing to the left then leave more room on the left of the frame, although they usually take off in such a random way that you just can't predict a flight pattern. Much of the process is hit and hope. The only thing that really helps is the pre-burst facility. You hold the button half down and when the insect takes off you push it all the way down and it shoots off frames, starting a second before, using the rolling buffer it was collecting while your finger was half down. This still results in about 20 frames being shot with hopefully the good bit, the take off sequence, being captured in the middle 4 or 5 of those shots. 

It is unusual to catch stationary graylings with their wings open. These two were doing occasional flaps but because I had the camera on the pre-burst setting I was able to catch it. They did not keep their wings open long. I was hoping to catch them both taking off at the same time but they did not oblige.

Of course sometimes the subject takes a detour and immediately flies out of the focal plane making the sequence unusable. The most difficult choice is how far to zoom in or out and how much room to leave around the subject. Zoom out too far and you get less detail (but more wingbeats). Zoom in too far and the butterfly leaves the frame in a shot or 2 but you might get a much better detailed shot of it taking off. I find the process reveals lots you would never see. Even the quite bad results give you an insight into a movement that is otherwise too quick to appreciate. You just can't see the subtle complexities of the wing movements and rather odd flapping, that powers these small and papery aircraft around their terrain. 

if you are lucky the grayling will show its forewing eyespots 

The eyespots are (allegedly) to deter predators. Mary and I discussed how frightening this was and reckoned not very. However since they don't have teeth or claws or anything else with which to defend themselves, this is pretty much all they have. Camouflage is a far better bet and most of these specimens were only seen after they moved as I approached them. If they avoid moving you can easily walk right by them unawares.

loads of small skippers in Holyrood

I have no idea why bags of rocks have been choppered into place
up the Gutted Haddie path which was only recently resurfaced

I'm not sure if these airlifted rocks were dropped at the wrong place. No work has commenced there. It's as if a big mistake were made and nobody is admitting it. Are they really planning a refit on a path that won't require it for another hundred years? It seems odd. Still, they (HES) have a £129million pound budget so can afford to mess things up.

GVWs (male hassling female)

comma

Mary initially thought this squirrel was maybe a stoat.
It was quite stoat-like but the furry tail gives it away.

Finally after pasting the graylings taking off into a composite shot I produced these 2 images. Not a huge improvement on the previous, but the subject was in better condition and they show the uppers pretty well. Work in progress. I took loads more but they'd either fly out of focus or had their wings all scrunched up in a way that didn't look optimal. It is just luck whether the camera catches wings open or closed, and most of the time there is a lot going against the chances of producing an attractive sequence of a butterfly flying up and out the frame, the camera catching it at nicely spaced intervals with wings just so. I took 480 images to get maybe a dozen photos of the graylings and 2 composites.

So a high fail rate but since the camera is taking about 10 shots a second, not a huge investment. The hardest bit is waiting in place with the shot lined up and the butterfly not taking off. As knees ache and arms weary. I could almost do with a butterfly wrangler just out of shot making waving gestures or doing something to shift the grayling. The one time I asked Mary to move towards the subject to get it to fly off the results were no better and mostly of a (seemingly giant) hand coming in from one side.

A couple of tips if you are trying this: I move the focus point (with the joystick) to the bottom of the frame so that at least the focus starts on the butterfly. I use continuous focus although it is more often the butterfly staying roughly in the focal plane that determines how well it stays in focus. I tend to shoot around f/6.3~f/10 to keep the shutter speed high.

where much of the action happened