Bookham Common is a National Trust site in north Surrey that I have been meaning to visit for sometime. Firstly because it is one of the nearest sites to central London to have a number of special butterfly species (Purple Emperor; White Admiral; Brown Hairstreak and Brown Argus) but also because of its easy accessibility having a train station adjacent to the common. So I took the opportunity to visit today. In all honesty it was probably 2-3 weeks too late for the best of the butterflies but I thought it would be worth a look around.
The morning was bright and cool as I arrived at the common, which is a mixture of pasture meadow and woodland with a series of pools in the middle. The temperature and the increasing cloud cover during the morning made for a lack of activity but I did see 6 species of butterfly, the most numerous being speckled Wood and Gatekeeper.
Of the special species my best chance was always going to be Brown Hairstreak as this is still on the wing well into August and I did see one confirmed female and two possible males but all were fly-by views and so I didn’t get to see the characteristic markings on the male to confirm identity.
Photo by Mike Darlow from UK (brown hairstreak Uploaded by Amada44) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
female showing characteristic orange bars in wing
Photo by Aah-Yeah (Flickr: Brown Hairstreak Nierenfleck Zipfelfalter) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
On and around the ponds there were a large number of Common Blue damselflies; some Common Darters; blue -tailed damselflies; an Emperor dragonfly and a Ruddy Darter.
It is certainly an interesting site and I will certainly be planning a return visit in July next yea to look for the other special species.
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