The green hairstreak is the only green coloured butterfly in the UK. I had been aware of the species for some time, but had only caught a very brief glimpse of one at Noar Hill a few years ago. In spite of hunting high and low through the undergrowth, I didn’t see it again on that visit and they remained a mystery to me until the end of April this year.
Having had many fruitless attempts to photograph the rare Duke of Burgundy in Kent, I decided to pay a visit to one of my favourite reserves towards the end of April. It was a lovely, sunny day, but a brisk Northerly wind was blowing through the valley and in the three hours I spent there, I saw fewer than 20 individual butterflies. It was still nice to get out, but I was heading back to where I had parked my little car and I had still photographed nothing.
Then I spotted this stunning little green hairstreak on a patch of stinging nettles. He was fairly co-operative, but the wind proved tricky as the nettles waved about wildly. In the end, I had to sacrifice depth of field by opening up the aperture to f/11 to achieve a shutter speed in excess of 1/2,000th second. These images were all taken on the same day, although I did return the following day in the hope that the wind may have died down. If anything, it was worse than the previous day. I was lucky to get what I did.
