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The Small Blue is tiny with a wing span of only an inch or less. It's little round wings have a distinctive underside of clear silver-blue while its upper sides are dark brownish. It is scattered across different parts of the British Isles but only as small isolated colonies except in its strongholds of the Cotswolds, South Dorset and Salisbury Plain. It should not be confused with the Common Blue which is larger and has orange dots around its underside edges. |
Sources of Info: "The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland" - J. Thomas and R. Lewington. Dorling Kindersley 1991. |
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The Small Blue is extremely rare in Devon , only occurring at Braunton Burrows in North Devon and in one secret quarry location, discovered in 1999, in Torquay. |
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The Small Blue needs sheltered, sunny sites and depends on a plant called kidney vetch which only grows on calcareous (lime rich) grassland. The adults fly in May and June and take nectar from kidney vetch, birdsfoot trefoil and horseshoe vetch. The female lays her tiny bun shaped, bluish eggs singly into the flowerheads of a kidney vetch that is still in bud. The caterpillars hatch out after 1 – 3 weeks and burrow deep into the flowerhead to feed on the anthers and developing seeds. If two or more caterpillars enter the same flower a battle to the death will begin! |
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By late July the caterpillars move down onto the ground, settle under moss or soil and become dormant for 9 months. It is only in the following April or May that they move again to a new site (again on the ground) where it pupates and starts to metamorphose into a butterfly. |
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For more information on what the Trust is doing to restore the Small Blue's habitat in Torbay see the section on the Small Blue in the main Trust site. |
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