Green Hairstreak - Callophrys rubi

I am not really sure how I feel about wind farms. I don't like the look of them, particularly as the few that were built are expanding and starting to merge together. On the other hand, it must be good to generate electricity without releasing carbon or producing toxic byproducts.

Actually, it is the large tracks that are cut into the landscape that worry me more than the turbines. Much of the area I was walking in today is very wet, but where the tracks have been created, there is a large ditch either side, allowing the water to drain off the hills. The hills used to act like a large reservoir of water, but now no sooner than it rains, the water runs off sometimes causing flooding downstream.

Today I went in search of Green Hairstreaks, Callophrys rubi, close to a large wind farm in the Lammermuir Hills.

I had been told of the location of some recent sightings of this butterfly, and many of them were tantalizingly close to the East Lothian border. I plotted the locations onto a map and there was a row of dots just a few metres outside East Lothian's boundary looking as though they were just about to mount an attack!

Up here the Green Hairstreak caterpillar food plant is Blaeberry, or Bilberry, Vaccinium myrtillus. I had been advised to look for boggy areas with tussocks of Blaeberry and the sightings that I had plotted all appeared to be close to Spruce plantations.

It was difficult to get through the boggy ground from the wind farm tracks to the areas I wanted to check out. I ended up taking quite a detour, and as I was getting close to a Spruce woodland I thought I would check the blaeberries growing close by. To my delight I saw a small green butterfly flying into the air in front of me. It was soon being chased by another. These were the first Green Hairstreaks I had seen in Britain!

I walked along a small valley to where I had been told that other Green Hairstreaks had been seen and I was delighted to see several more.

The reason that no Green Hairstreaks had been seen in East Lothian became apparent when I looked over the fence and saw that the farmer on the other side had improved his grazing, and instead of bog there was rough grassland. I searched all around the woodlands, but there was no sign of any Blaeberry and consequently no sign of any Green Hairstreaks on the East Lothian side of the boundary.

I then followed a stream all the way to a local nature reserve to see if there was any suitable habitat there. On my way down the stream, I was stopped in my tracks when I saw a Green Hairstreak on a leaf in front of me. I was very excited, as I thought this was my first East Lothian record, but then realised that I had jumped over the stream to get past some rocks and I was actually back on the other side of the border!

The butterfly was just below the centre of the picture above. On the right hand side of the stream is East Lothian, and on the left is Midlothian. You can see how close this was to being an East Lothian record!!

Although this didn't seem to be the right sort of habitat for a Green Hairstreak, I climbed up the slope and found Blaeberries growing.

I spent some time searching the slopes on the East Lothian side and found a few patches of Blaeberry growing, but sadly no Green Hairstreaks. At least I know the sort of habitat that I need to be looking for, so the search will go on!