Ovum

The spaniel was busy extracting a thorn from one of his front paws so I stopped to take a closer look at some young blackthorn suckers. The chances of finding brown hairstreak eggs are always pretty remote, especially here at the eastern most limit of its range,  so you can imagine my surprise that the very first blackthorn I looked at there was the tiny egg - less than half a millimetre wide but with its distinctive sea urchin shape. I've never recorded brown hairstreak on my butterfly transect but this is the second time I've found one of their eggs within a hundred metres or so of the route. The egg would have been laid in August or September and won't hatch until April. One can only hope that its not lost to the aggressive and unnecessary hedge flailing that occurs too often around here.