It's not just Birds that have Wings - 18th July 2026

Saturday morning and after a physio appointment on Friday I decided to test the resilience of my troublesome hip with a visit to Otmoor RSPB in search of Brown Hairstreaks. A lens  and camera combination weighing 2kgs hanging from my shoulder would be make or break with regard to my troublesome hip..

I arrived mid morning and took to  the familiar track between the fulsome summer largesse of tangled bramble, hawthorn, bindweed, hogweed and angelica, you name it, forming great impenetrable banks of vegetation, a natural corridor  rising  up to meet the morning sunshine

There was one other enthusiast already here with the same mission as myself and we stood chatting as you do, awaiting a hoped for appearance of a Brown Hairstreak..

Insect life was here aplenty,  a swarm of Gatekeepers tumbled down and amongst the blackberry flowers, their wings flashing open to reveal winking eyes as they fed on the bramble flowers, Green veined Whites, a Peacock and a Comma also enjoyed the bramble flower nectar along with countless bees, beetles and hoverflies, most beyond my identification capacity.

But what of the Brown Hairstreaks? Well not much when I first arrived just aftet 10am.There is one place in the mass of vegetation that seems to be particularly favoured by them and from experience I knew if one was not on view right away then the best strategy is to stand at that place and wait.Most times this ploy is eventually successful but occasionally not.

An hour passed, not unpleasantly standing in this narrow corridor through the vegetation, the sun was warm but not overbearing and the insect life was forever entertaining.With the increased sunshine and warmth as the morning progressed now came the dragonflies, Brown and Southern Hawker, Common and Ruddy Darters but not the elusive butterfly.

To my surprise no one else came to this popular spot.We were on our own and my erstwhile companion told me he had been here since 8am and had seen a male Brown Hairstreak before I arrived  but nothing since. He also mentioned,  as an afterthought, he had found a Wasp Spider on another part of the reserve.

I enquired whereabouts and it transpired not very far from where we stood .I rather like Wasp Spiders and he showed me an image he had taken of the spider which revealed it was a spectacular female sat proudly in the middle of her web like an exotic trapeze artist.

It was too much to resist and with little sign of any hairstreak action I made haste to the spider leaving my companion to keep a vigil for the hairstreaks.

It took no time to find the spider, hiding in plain site in its fantastical web.A superb colourful creature  its sulphur yellow body circled with broad bands of black, hanging upside down in the web's  centre with long black and white legs clinging  to the gossamer lines of her web - her patterning and colour an anti predator stratagem that mimicked a wasp perfectly.

She  had obviously been successful in capturing other insects, as two bundles of silk encased victims she had injected with poison as they struggled in her web were hanging there for later attention but  for now she remained still and unmoved in the centre of her web.The web is large and shaped like an orb secured by silken threads to surrounding blades of grass and other vegetation.Uniquely the web has a wide white zig zag strip running down the middle known as a stabilimentum.To this day no one is exactly sure what it is for.

Wasp Spiders are a relatively recent colonist from continental Europe and are now leaving their initial southern England colonies where they are not scarce and slowly moving northwards and it was good to see this one on Otmoor as I have only seen one other in Oxfordshire, at Radley which is not that far away.

Watching her I noticed a much smaller, pale brown spider hanging about at the periphery of the web but maintaining a discreet distance from the female. I assume this was a male Wasp Spider awaiting an opportunity to mate with the female. He was wise to maintain his distance as he was courting extreme danger, that could well prove fatal.In order to mate he has to wait until the female has moulted into her mature form, then and only  then take advantage of her jaws being soft and rush in to mate with her but many males never make it or misjudge the timing and are killed and eaten by the female.I could not help but ponder if one of the silken wrapped bundles in her web might be an unfortunate male.

Happy with my successful spider expedition I returned to my butterfly companion and to find him photographing a male Brown Hairstreak nectaring on a purple thistle head. Anxious it might depart we were solicitous in allowing each other to get our photos but we need not have worried as the butterfly remained for well over an hour, tripping through the florets of various thistle heads as it supped their nectar before flying up to settle on a bramble leaf.

We left it there.