White-letter Hairstreaks off Pembroke Road!

Monday 22nd June 2026

Only my third ever White-letter Hairstreak. Seen off Pembroke Road, Old Portsmouth this morning.

Though I never went to bed at near midnight last night, due to a damn good series on Netflix, I was still up at around 5am to check on the Moth Box once again (am I mad?) and even at this ungodly hour, it was quite warm. By midday, my car said it was 31 degrees centigrade and Tuesday and Wednesday are reported to get much hotter! Gulp! I was also back to work in Pembroke Road this morning, but last night, I was told by my employers that because of the heatwave, we will not have to do a second shift throughout the week!

My Moth Box:

This Crescent Plume is a good record for my garden although they are becoming annual now.

Yet again, once I switch off the light from the Moth Box, several Moths simply up and leave before I have the chance to ID them. Most frustrating! However, there were plenty here again to go through as I recorded 77 moths of 35 species today, which included both Rufous Pearl (Udea fulvalis) and a Crescent Plume (Marasmarcha lunaeadactyla), both new for the year and the latter, starting to become annual to my garden.

Above, a Heart & Club and below, the micro moth Twenty-plume Moth.

Another good number of Moths to go through and nice to get another Heart & Club within the Box, which is a species that is irregular to my garden. My second Twenty-plume Moth for the year was within one of the egg trays and both Grey Knot-horn and Hawthorn Moth were most welcome this morning as micro species were nearly as abundant as the macro species. The Moths recorded this morning included the following:

MACRO MOTHS	MICRO MOTHS
Riband Wave x14	Golden-brown Tubic x1
Treble Brown Spot x1	Twenty-plume Moth x1
Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing x1	Crescent Plume * x1
Lacky x1	Common Plume x1
Marbled Minor agg, x1	Box Tree Moth x1
Willow Beauty x1	Blushed Knot-horn x3
Garden Carpet x2	Rusty-dot Pearl x4
Common Emerald x5	Rufous Pearl * x2
Dun-bar x1	Hawthorn Moth x1
White Ermine x3	Bee Moth x2
Common Pug x2	Brown House Moth x1
Double-striped Pug x2	Large Pale Masoner x2
Heart & Club x1	Garden Grass-veneer x5
Dark Arches x3	Grey Knot-horn x1
Pale Mottled Willow x2	Diamondback Moth x1
L-album Wainscot x1	Beautiful Plume x1
Heart & Dart x2	Bud Moth x2
Bright-line Brown-eye x1

The insects attracted to my Moth Box overnight included a Broad Centurian, which is a species of Soldier Fly and quite striking too. Two Marmalade Hoverflies were also present plus one Lacewing.

Pembroke Road, Old Portsmouth:

Another photo of the White-letter Hairstreak butterfly.

After last Friday’s discovery of Purple Hairstreaks along the alleyway between the Bowling Green and the Bungalow, I decided to get to Pembroke Road a little earlier than usual and knowing full well that the sun will be shining, I took my camera along with me this time to photograph the Purple Hairstreaks. However, I was in for a surprise as I focused on one of the Butterflies and realised the underwing was brown instead of grey and realised I was looking at White-letter Hairstreaks instead!

In fact, two were present at least, but only the first individual showed very well in the strong sunshine, sitting out in the open on a leaf, fairly high up, but my excellent camera picked it up nicely and I managed to get some decent shots of this sought after species. I have only ever seen this species twice and that was a long time ago. I put a photo of the Hairstreak on the ‘Lazee Birders’ Whatsapp page, though just after a photo was put up on the same site of a Scarce Swallow-tail butterfly that was taken by Andy Tew in Romsey!!! Incredible stuff.

Back to the birds and a good total of 15 species were recorded this morning and that included a family flock of Coal Tits (very rare here), a Collared Dove, which is almost surprisingly as rare as the Coal Tits and a good count of around 10 Swifts. There were a few omissions this morning here, like the Black-headed Gull and Great Tit, but most of the usual species were present. 

The Holly Blue near where the Hairstreaks were.

Other Butterflies seen this morning here included a Holly Blue and a Large White by the Bowling Green and a Red Admiral was seen later in the day in Highland Road.