Monday, July 4, 2016

Knepp Update

Purple Emperor continues to emerge steadily at Knepp. We haven't had a mass emergence yet ('Big Bang') and to date only three females have been reported.  I've managed 120 sightings of apparent individuals so far, mainly of sallow-searching males during the late morning period.  To date, few have gone on to establish territories on the oaks during the afternoons, so things have been rather quiet from around 1 pm. 

It's still too early to judge how big an emergence we'll get, with much depending on flight season weather, but I don't think this is going to be a great Emperor season - though I'd be happy to be proven wrong.  

Clearly, the butterfly is only just starting elsewhere, and late sites such as Savernake Forest probably wont kick off until the weekend.

  

1 comment:

dennis said...

120 sightings ??
this is simply mind blowing