White-letter Hairstreak on a thisle flower

White-letter Hairstreak. Photo: David Parish

David got this great shot while out looking for this butterfly with Brian Arnold at Harman’s Cross on 06/07/2017. Brian says:

“Today we searched for a while looking up at the Elm trees but did not see any, but I then walked to the east most point of the Elm trees where there is a small patch of thistles in the field, and after a couple of minutes spotted a small dark coloured butterfly which was a White-letter Hairstreak. I have not seen them near the ground there before, previously they have been high in the Elm trees or very occasionally in the lower branches. My last sightings were 2 years ago when I saw 2, and 3 years ago when I saw 5 Today we saw 2 down low in the patch of thistles in the field. The first one flew away quite quickly and back up into the Elms. The second stayed down low for about 20 minutes giving us plenty of time to get photographs before it also flew away.”

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