Adonis blue  (Lysandra bellargus)

Found across Europe, in Britain the Adonis blue is at the northern extreme of its range (3), and has always been restricted to the warmer dry calcareous grasslands of southern England. It has suffered a huge decline in the last 200 years, and has been lost from Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk, the Cotswolds, and the Chilterns. The main strongholds are Dorset, Wiltshire, Sussex (3) and the Isle of Wight (4). Over the whole of Britain there has been a huge decline of over 90 percent in numbers of this species since 1950 (5).

Inhabits warm south-facing slopes in chalk or limestone grassland characterised by short turf, where there is plenty of the larval foodplant horseshoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa) (3).