Orange-tip butterflies have always seemed much more numerous in West Sussex, than East Sussex. This is probably down to the mowing culture of the different councils, as well as the West being more wooded. Certainly, when Lisa and I visited Ebernoe Common, it was very evident how many more Orange-tips were flying there, so with me visiting West Sussex more this year, I was hoping to actually get more photos than usual of them. Strangely though, all of my better shots this year of Orange-tips have come from East Sussex. I have always wanted to get shots of the male and female together, and ..read more

 Yet another week has just passed with very little warmth, sunshine or calm conditions. In fact many days felt like winter had returned. Rather than complaining though, I decided to have a long walk through Friston Forest to see if I could find any roosting butterflies. Not an easy task, but rewarding when successful. What has been very noticeable in the past couple of weeks is the mass of Garlic Mustard, which has obviously taken advantage of the damp cool spring. Garlic Mustard is also one of the main larval foodplants of both the Orange-tip and Green-veined White. Hopefully with all th ..read more

 It was time for my annual Early Spider Orchid fix, and after getting a call from David, telling me that he and Gary were going to a favourite site of mine, I decided to join them. We also invited Pete to join us, so it was quite a party when we all met up. Once again, the cold breeze that seems to have been with us for so long, was still there, and along the top of the downland it was pretty exposed. It is quite a long walk to the hillside where the orchids are, so there was plenty of time for a bit of banter, and finding out where everyone had been recently. Japan was the furthest any o ..read more

 Lisa has just had a couple of weeks off from her dancing work, which has given us a few chances to get out and about in nature. During the first week we had an early Green Hairstreak on my patch, this was equal the earliest date I have seen this species. We saw it in a brief sunnier spell and unfortunately the butterfly flew deep into the bushes pretty much as soon as we saw it. However, it was great to get one of these beauties so early. Fingers crossed for many more sightings in the next few weeks. This past weekend was spent over in West Sussex. The Friday was spent covering 3 sites h ..read more

 With the wind howling again outside it doesn't seem possible that April is here along with several species of butterfly. A really good walk yesterday along the patch produced 8 different species of butterfly. The day started with my year list on 8 and after the walk, despite seeing 8 species, it was still on 8. However, just after arriving home and the weather was good enough for having lunch in the garden, the list for both the day, and year went up a notch to 9 when a Large White flew across the garden. Below are some of the photos of butterflies, and other creatures I've seen so far i ..read more

 One of the earlier moths to appear each year is the wonderful Small Eggar. My patch happens to hold the only known colonies of this moth on the whole of the South Downs National Park. It is more a moth of the western counties and East Anglia, and was thought to be nearly extinct in Sussex until this local colony appeared in 2017. It very quickly became a very strong colony with around 50 larval webs found in 2020, although numbers have now dropped back a bit from that. In 2022 I found the earliest stage when I came across the egg batch that had been laid on a small Blackthorn sapling. Th ..read more

 With the Adders performing so well for myself and Graham last week, Lisa and I decided to have a go at the weekend to see if they would be as photogenic. The Bog Beacon would also be a new species for her, so there was another reason for making the trip. The only fly in the ointment, was that the weather forecast was not particularly promising, with quite a breeze blowing and only a few sunny intervals. However, as is often the case it seems these days, the forecast was not exactly accurate and there was actually more sunshine than predicted as well as the wind not being as strong as exp ..read more

 With the days getting longer, and warmer, I wanted to get to Abbotts Wood, just on the very slight chance of finding another Large Tortoiseshell. Since 2021 I have found 2 in this large woodland. Of course, it is all down to luck with this species, especially in such a large woodland. Unfortunately, when I arrived I found that the car park was temporarily closed, and although a couple of the roadside lay-bys were vacant, the weather over the past few weeks had left them full of potholes, mud and water and I thought better of it, so onward to another woodland where Large Tortoiseshells ha ..read more

 So far this year I have managed to get to Elmley Nature Reserve twice. Once in January, with David, and then a couple of weeks ago with Lisa. The visit with David was on a very cold day. Unbeknown to us at the time, there were massive delays on the road that day just south of Emley at the junction with the M2. This is ongoing major roadworks which were causing delays of traffic going north of well over an hour. The satnav did know and was sending us down lots of single lane roads, which on that particular day were also very icy. We passed one van that had slid off into a ditch and also s ..read more

 During my 2 week break in Worthing, I managed to have 4 different sessions with the local Sanderling. This is a lovely small wader that I have photographed on a handful of occasions over the years, but not particularly successfully. As their name suggests, Sanderling do like the sand, as that is where their main food supply is. Over in Seaford, the beaches are pebbles, hence, no Sanderling. By studying the tide times it was easy to get to the beach when the sand was showing, and as the beach in Worthing is very close to where Lisa lives it was great to arrive and leave at the right times ..read more