butterfly heaven

 

12-08-25

This might be the best day this year. Certainly the most photos and videos I've ever taken in one day, (2600+ accounting for 21GB!) mainly due to capturing butterflies in the process of taking off which can take 20 images per lift-off. And there were many, many butterflies. There was also some excellent dragonfly action and an unusual insect rescued from a near drowning. What more can a boy ask for? Let's go!

female common hawker egglaying pondside
still trialling these orange tags

I decided to cycle to Saltoun. Last trip I bused, then ran from Pencaitland. The heavy backpack bumping in the small of my back didn't seem aggravating at the time, but the next day there was a big return of previous sciatica (which had been grumbling of late) in my lower back and down the right quad and into my calf. A nearly continual ache for a few days which is only now beginning to ease off a bit. So cycling seemed like the less dangerous option. There was a small headwind (frustratingly in both the out and return!) so I wasn't chasing times but managed a moderate to good 73mins there, 83mins back. 

My plan was primarily to chase more slo-mo close-up dragonfly footage like the stuff last time but hopefully better. Always, hopefully better! I was surprised and a little chagrined to find the Southern hawkers and black darters still absent. But whenever I feel let down on such adventures I remind myself that I am not sitting in an office doing meaningless work for people I don't respect. Which invariably reminds me how blessed my life is. 

It was a glorious day and there were plenty common hawkers at the first pond. I planned to set out my stall down on the right, where the sun was behind my shoulder and the hawkers regularly fly by, checking the pondside reeds and grasses for females. The first photos of the day were of a female sneaking around the vegetation and egglaying. Fairly quickly she was pounced upon by an excitable male who grabbed her and then flew into a small tree directly above. I managed to get an angle for a photo. You can see the female's wings are waterlogged where the ignoble male landed so heavily he dunked her underwater. Not the most chivalrous behaviour.

male above female below

plenty common darters

I then sat for the rest of an hour waiting for hawkers to come past and hover. I had the camera set to over seven times normal frame rate. This was nearly double the last slo-mo I shot of hawkers. I hoped to slow down the action till you see individual wingbeats. Only nobody was hovering a yard and a half in front of me. Many flew right past, none lingered. It was frustrating. I am not great at boring activities that require a deal of patience with no pay-off. About halfway through the long hour I put on my cammo poncho, a feeble attempt to disguise or minimise my presence at the pondside. There was no appreciable change in the hawkers behaviour. I was sat on a small brick ledge beside the pond which (being damp) I covered with a Sainsbury's bag for (wild)life, on top of which were the cushioned (gardeners) kneepads Mary bought me. I suspect the problem was the tip-top weather and nearly constant sunshine which was provoking a frenzy of hawker mating instincts. 

After an hour I gave up and went off to photograph butterflies. I knew they'd be out in masses up the back trail and that if the dragonflies were being uncooperative I could have much more fun with the butterflies. It reminded me that swimming against the tide is a tiring process. You can't push the river and all that. It was a good call, and I'll post directly below what happened within 5 mins of returning to the dragonfly pond a few hours later. I'd had a ludicrously good butterfly shoot and before returning to my bike thought I'd check the dragonfly pond on the way past. No poncho and I was stood in full view. Maybe because I was very apparent there, a hawker came over and spent a couple of seconds checking me out. I lifted the camera and shot just under 2 seconds of high speed footage. A minute or two later the same one or another did similarly, but even closer. With no fuss I framed it, got it in focus and shot another second and a half of slo-mo. It was so successful I then waited around another 15minutes to see if there was going to be a whole succession of posers hovering right in front of me. Nope. 

Both this footage and that of the last trip was shot towards the end of the afternoon. Around 4pm. Maybe the hawkers are less frenzied by then. There seems nothing I could call a recipe for success. Other than give it a shot. You might get lucky. It does help to have a flagship quality camera. I have been so impressed with my Lumix G9ii. However as I increase the frames-per-second, there are restrictions. It says I can shoot up to a frightening 300fps (12 x slower) but everything above 120fps is manual focus only. Which I thought was a bit limiting until I realised for dragonflies it all happens far too quickly to consider changing focus and that if you are in focus (and autofocus still works at this point) directly before pushing record, it will largely stay in focus for the short space of time the subject is in the frame. So manual focussing is neither here nor there. And I can't believe the amazing results. That my camera can turn a tiny moment of midair insect thrash into a luxuriously long and smooth result. Still not quite isolating individual wingbeats but maybe that will happen at 300fps. Will try next trip. If the hawkers consent.

super slo-mo common hawkers, 170fps

So although it started and finished with the dragonflies, the middle bit, the butterflies, was just fantastic! I saw a few flitting about near the ponds and the woodpile but kept my powder dry till I got to the back trail. This is where the scabious lined path begins and where the butterfly count went from an individual or two, to dozens. I always message Nick, the area recorder, with numbers seen after a trip to East Lothian, so right from this point I started a tally. Maybe sixty yards in and it was 12 peacocks, 7 RAs, 3 commas, some whites, and a wall. Anything unusual and I'd aim to get a photo as a reminder to add to Nick's total. By the end of butterfly alley I had got 46 peacocks, 35 admirals, 24 commas, 9 speckleds, 7 walls, 7 large whites, and a few other odds and ends. Including a solitary small tort and a spectacular painted lady. That last one was happy to let me stand really near and get a load of photos.

comma underside

small tort had lost some rear wing

wall

wall female

female wall resisting the charms of a passing male

painted lady

before

Photoshop in action: I had taken this photo and felt the big stalk on the left was too much of a distraction. Too heavy visually. Since I do not have the latest photo editing stuff I have to sort it using a clone tool and paint brush tool in photoshop elements. Since I don't do any painting IRF these days this is as close as I get to creative work, other than just taking photos. Occasionally I will fix a wee notch or tear in a butterfly wing, but mostly I just use it to change background elements or lessen the impact of some part that is maybe distracting from the subject. I don't have any AI tools so it takes about 15~20mins to sort a photo like this. Which means I try to sort things before I take the photo if I can, by moving to a better position or angle where I don't have a blade of grass or flower coming into the frame unwanted.

after

another knapweed fruit fly near where I saw the last one

comma with heather background

It was an unusual delight seeing so many commas in relative proximity. Other places like Warriston, if more than one shows up, often they will battle out territorial rights by flying in circles high into the sky with presumably the victor returning to the territory and the other flying off. Here they all rub up against each other just fine. I'm not sure if the scabious flowers have some sort of placating or relaxing effect (or if nobody fights over this territory) but apart from an occasional jostle to get on the same flower, they were almost all pretty well behaved and peacefully interacting. The walls were perhaps the least well behaved with males still somewhat frantically flying up and down the trail stopping at every available female wall. Although sometimes noising up the admirals as well, which look nothing like female walls. 

last of the mohicans small skippers

I eventually got my sandwiches out. I was really starving, but of course every time I thought about them there was something else to photo and it took a long while before I got them out my bag. And several times I had to put them down between taking shots. It seemed every time I put my camera to one side something else flew into sight. Next visit I intend to take a selfie stick to push my camera (with wide-angle street lens on) through the busiest butterfly areas like a low level walk-through video. I have tried this with the DJI Pocket and a mobile phone in previous years, but don't feel I have adequately caught the atmosphere in high quality video. Fingers crossed next visit numbers will be around their highest. Slightly fewer this year than last I suspect. Even though the weather has been far better this year, there seems to be sections that haven't fully recovered from the forestry work and don't have the scabious and knapweed lining the path as last year. However it is still a sight to behold. And a more abundant collection of butterflies than anywhere I know of.

the only small copper of the day

wall noising up an admiral

unusually sociable commas

small white

around 300 stills, run together, of take-offs and landings
soundtrack: Withdraw by Winter Silouette

***Extra bonus: odd and large fly goes swimming!***

I was watching dragonflies at the first pond when I heard and saw a large beast struggling in the water. It may have gone for a drink on a warm day and ended up falling in. We've all been there. It was near the edge but was having more trouble than I thought necessary to haul itself out onto the surface pond vegetation. I meant to take a few shots but the camera was still in slo-mo mode so I shot a couple of seconds video before changing to photos and taking a pic or 2.

Sirex juvencus - Steely-blue woodwasp (m) 

By now I was feeling very sorry for the floudering insect and scooped it out the water, before even considering the potential for giant-insect-on-hand photos. There was a gun-metal blue sheen over the black (and orange) body and it was really very impressive. I reckoned it was a giant woodwasp or similar and probably didn't have a sting, although it did look formidable. And had it not been close to drowning I would have kept my distance. First thing it did was turn its wing motors to full speed and with a loud buzz shook all the water off. It then sat happily on my hand in the sun and caught its breath. It would have made a great photo on my hand (I reckoned it was 35mm but the info says males 30mm) but I had the 400mm zoom on my camera which can't focus on anything as close as my hand. I hoped to get my backpack off and get my mobile phone out, but in order to get the second shoulder strap off it had to pass over the insect on my hand which flew off, a little wobbly at first then zoomed off strongly into the trees. I was very pleased to have helped this magnificent creature out of a bad situation, but sorry not to have spent longer in its company, or got more photos.

drowning not waving

although filmed at 170fps I sped this up in post as it was a bit too languid

Later when I got home I couldn't find anything in my large insect book or online that exactly matched the insect although I thought it was probably a relative of the sawflies and woodwasps. Likely a male as it didn't have the large ovipositor that the females boast. I sent a photo to Per, the biologist who runs the Cemetery Wildlife Watch and is an authority on insects. He replied saying "I think its a male Sirex juvencus. It's a different species of woodwasp. Nice find. Not common in Scotland."
Doesn't even appear or get a mention in Brock's Britain's Insects! Steely-blue Woodwasp seems to be the non-Latin name. I have logged it on iRecord.

What a great finale to a great day. Cycle home wasn't even too bad!

just under 2miles in just under 4hrs