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.

Advection Frost

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.

21 april 2021

Padiham, Lancashire

Last years leaves can still be seen on these trees

Male Orange Tip butterfly in my garden

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.

My attempt at the "Looking Close... on Friday" theme "Tip".

Shot with a Schneider Kreuznach "Makro-Symmar 120 mm F 5.9 Makro-Iris" lens on a Canon EOS R5.

Captured for Looking close on Friday: Tip. HLCoF everyone!

Orange tip Butterfly seen at RSPB Leighton Moss. (2123)

Gannet - Morus Bassanus

Bempton Cliffs

The gannets are large white birds with yellowish heads; black-tipped wings; and long bills. Northern gannets are the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, having a wingspan of up to 2 metres (6.6 ft). The other two species occur in the temperate seas around southern Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand.

Gannets hunt fish by diving into the sea from a height and pursuing their prey underwater. Gannets have a number of adaptations which enable them to do this:

no external nostrils, they are located inside the mouth instead;

air sacs in the face and chest under the skin which act like bubble wrapping, cushioning the impact with the water;

positioning of the eyes far enough forward on the face for binocular vision, allowing them to judge distances accurately.

Gannets can dive from a height of 30 metres (98 ft), achieving speeds of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) as they strike the water, enabling them to catch fish much deeper than most airborne birds.

The gannet's supposed capacity for eating large quantities of fish has led to gannet becoming a description of somebody with a voracious appetite.

Gannets are colonial breeders on islands and coasts, normally laying one chalky, blue egg. Gannets lack brood patches and they use their webbed feet to warm the eggs. It takes five years for gannets to reach maturity. First-year birds are completely black, and subsequent sub-adult plumages show increasing amounts of white.

The most important nesting ground for northern gannets is the United Kingdom with about two thirds of the world's population. These live mainly in Scotland, including the Shetland Isles. The rest of the world's population is divided between Canada, Ireland, Faroe Islands and Iceland, with small numbers in France (they are often seen in the Bay of Biscay), the Channel Islands, Norway and a single colony in Germany on Heligoland. The biggest northern gannet colony is on Scotland's Bass Rock; in 2014, this colony contained some 75,000 pairs. Sulasgeir off the coast of the Isle of Lewis, St. Kilda, Grassholm in Pembrokeshire, Bempton Cliffs in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Sceilig Bheag, Ireland and Bonaventure Island, Quebec are also important northern gannet breeding sites.

Young gannets were historically used as a food source, a tradition still practised in Ness, Scotland, where they are called guga. Like examples of continued traditional whale harvesting, the modern day hunting of gannet chicks results in great controversies as to whether it should continue to be afforded exemption from the ordinary protection afforded to sea birds in UK and EU law". The Ness hunt is currently limited to 2,000 chicks per year, and dates back at least to the Iron Age. The hunt is considered to be sustainable, as between 1902 and 2003 Gannet numbers in Scotland increased dramatically from 30,000 to 180,000.

Population:

UK breeding:

220,000 nests

Looking close...on Friday!:-)

The subject is tip . . .

Aurorafalter / Orange tip / mariposa aurora / L’Aurore

Anthocharis cardamines

Explore flic.kr/s/aHsmV72qC4

I've censored the exact location, so as not to tip off the succulent-thieves.

Color is as true-to-life as I could make it. The cold weather seems to bring out the reds, and this was an unusually bright one. It will bloom soon, an early one. Most of them don't bloom until late May or June.

This is likely Dudleya x cymosa. These are notoriously hard to ID to species, as they hybridize!

Individual rosettes for this one are palm size. These plants range from babies an inch or two across, to old timers a foot or more per rosette, and commonly cluster like this one.

Viceroy butterfly surveying its domain.

Common.

Tune ♥

Credits ♥

orange tip butterfly / Aurorafalter

Took this on a rainy/ cloudy day, so its more dull than I wanted but Im still glad I got a shot of one : )

Antwerp Series No 34

Anthocharis cardamines

Male on Lady's Smock

This male Orange Tip was taking a few minutes rest on his favourite sprig of Hawthorn, from defending his patch. Orange Tip season seems to be almost over. A shame as I love to see them in spring, and this was a bumper year for them.

Anthocharis cardamines (OrangeTip) is a small butterfly belonging to the Pieridae family. They emerge in early April. The males can be easily recognized by the orange tips of their wings which the females don't possess. They can be found throughout Europe and temperate Asia as far as China.

A Female Orange Tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) on the bright pink spring flowers

Old digital shot taken on a Canon EOS 40D

Martin Down, Hampshire

Happy Macro Monday

Gold glass holder creates the bokeh.

Oranjetipje

Auroraperhonen; Orange Tip; Anthocharis cardamines

France; Brenne, Lignac 5/4/20

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.

Captured for Macro Mondays theme: tea.

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

Female Orange Tip resting on Lady's Smock.

Kingcombe Meadows, Dorset.