TIP-TOP-FAV (0-99) READ THE RULES
View allAll Photos Tagged Tips
These pretty little butterflies are easy to spot as the males’ wings have bright orange tips – giving them their name! They are a common sight during spring and can be found in lots of places including meadows, woodland and hedges. The adults lay their eggs on special plants to ensure that their caterpillars have the right food to eat. Orange-tip caterpillars love garlic mustard, cuckooflower and hedge mustard plants.
The male orange-tip is unmistakeable: a white butterfly, half of its forewing is a bold orange, and it has light grey wingtips. The female is also white, but has grey-black wingtips, similar to the white butterflies. Both sexes show a mottled, 'mossy grey' pattern on the underside of their hindwings when at rest.
Little Tern - Sterna Albifrons
This delightful chattering seabird is the UK's smallest tern. It is short-tailed and has a fast flight. Its bill is a distinctive yellow with a black tip. It is noisy at its breeding colony where courtship starts with an aerial display involving the male calling and carrying a fish to attract a mate, which chases him up high before he descends, gliding with wings in a 'V'.
Its vulnerable nesting sites and its decline in Europe make it an Amber List species. It is also listed as a Schedule 1 species in The Wildlife and Countryside Act.
This bird breeds on the coasts and inland waterways of temperate and tropical Europe and Asia. It is strongly migratory, wintering in the subtropical and tropical oceans as far south as South Africa and Australia.
There are three subspecies, the nominate albifrons occurring in Europe to North Africa and western Asia; guineae of western and central Africa; and sinensis of East Asia and the north and east coasts of Australia.[4]
The little tern breeds in colonies on gravel or shingle coasts and islands. It lays two to four eggs on the ground. Like all white terns, it is defensive of its nest and young and will attack intruders.
Like most other white terns, the little tern feeds by plunge-diving for fish, usually from saline environments. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display.
At the beginning of the 19th century the little tern was a common bird of European shores, rivers and wetlands, but in the 20th century populations of coastal areas decreased because of habitat loss, pollution and human disturbance.
The loss of inland populations has been even more severe, since due to dams, river regulation and sediment extraction it has lost most of its former habitats. The Little Tern population has declined or become extinct in many European countries, and former breeding places on large rivers like the Danube, Elbe and Rhine ceased. Nowadays, only few river systems in Europe possess suitable habitats; the Loire/Allier in France, the Vistula/Odra in Poland, the Po/Ticino in Italy, the Daugava in Latvia, the Nemunas in Lithuania, the Sava in Croatia and the Drava in Hungary and Croatia. The status of the little tern on the rivers Tagus and lower Danube is uncertain.
Spotted on my weekly transect walk at King's Meadow Reserve in Nottingham (UK) - the only sighting on an uninspiring cool, breezy day (0203).
From a palm tree that produces small coconut like fruit. The trunk and fronds are covered with these thorns. They are up to six inches long and extremely sharp. The theme "tip" for today's Looking Close on Friday group inspired this photo.
Disgusting !!!!! - Fly tipping in Red Beck Valley
A lovely little valley and then some ********* come and dump this over a wall ......
Reported to our Local Council
Another slide restoration from the 1990s, this one showing the waste from slate mining in Wales.
Today of course, such waste is a valuable asset with many uses.
Aurorafalter / Orange tip / mariposa aurora / L’Aurore
Anthocharis cardamines
Explore flic.kr/s/aHsmV72qC4
The Orange Tips have been around in my garden for a while now but this is the only one I've seen land, fortunately I had the camera at the ready, extender and all!!
in the time of corona.
the dogs dig. everything has a tendency to be askew.
**I put the same photo in b&w tones below.
which do you like best, this one or the one below in comments?
As I was driving back to Anchroage from Seward I saw this mountain top. What grabbed my attention were the crisp sharp lines and angles of the snow on the mountain top.
bushveld purple tip/colotis ion
Sorry, can't show the purple tip, its on the inside, although with butterflies its called the upper side.
Update: iNaturalist's ID seems to be: diverse white/appias epaphia contracta www.inaturalist.org/observations/10243925
Eastern-tailed Blue butterfly taking nectar from a White Clover floret in deep grass.
As I understand things, the eye-spots and tail-like appendages are designed to mimic the insect's head. All in the hope that a predator attack there and saving the life of the butterfly. Seems to work. I've encountered specimens with that part of their wing clipped by what appears to be a bird's beak.
Common though not abundant, this year.