Bently Woods on 12th July 2006

Highlights - 2 Purple Emperor, Hundreds of Silver-washed Fritillary, White Admirals.
A wonderful morning walk in beautiful hot sunny weather through some lovely woodland. The tracks here are quite wide with flowers such as Creeping Thistle which bring the butterflies down to drink. We slowly walked to an area of Elm trees and then back again.
We saw 15 species of butterfly. Silver-washed Fritillary and Ringlets were the commonest with, probably, several hundred of each being seen – they were literally everywhere. Red Admiral, Large Skipper and Gatekeeper were common and were very regularly seen along all the tracks. Large White were fairly common and Marbled Whites were seen along some, more grassy, areas of trackway. White Admirals made a regular appearance with about 10 being seen altogether. Small Whites, Small Skippers, Comma and Brimstone were seen in small numbers. We saw about 3 Purple Hairstreak at the top of one large Oak – no doubt there were many more on other Oaks if we had searched! At the clump of Elm trees we saw 2 or 3 White-letter Hairstreak fluttering near the tops.
Lastly we saw 2 Purple Emperor. One was on a tree in the car park, taking sap from a broken bough. The other gave extraordinarily close views as it walked around the track at our feet, taking moisture and minerals from the stony surface and allowed us to approach to within a few inches. A very memorable experience.
Also recorded were singing Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Woodpigeon and 1 Broad-bodied Chaser dragonfly basking on a bush.