Orchids and Stodmarsh, Kent

The weekend was another really hot one at times, provided one kept to the southern part of the country. We were supposed to get storms and downpours towards the end of last week, but it was dry all the time. However, on the drive over to Colin's near Stanstead on Saturday I discovered that there were an awful lot of puddles in the road, and it rained quite heavily in parts of East Anglia that day.
We went to Kent and had blazing sunshine, high humidity all day.
Chatting to the guys we met last week in Bentley Wood we got fairly good directions to a couple of sites in and around Parkgate Down, so we decided to go there and see how things went. The first thing I noted were the large number of Monkey orchids in flower-having heard that the ones at Hartslock on the Thames had been out several weeks ago I assumed that there wouldn't be many left. More typical for this time of year were the Chalk Fragrant and Common Spotted orchids, the wild columbines Aquilegia vulgaris and many other downland plants. I cannot remember seeing Greater Butterfly orchids here before but there were several fine plants, but much harder to locate were about six Fly orchids. Our main target, the Late Spider orchid couldn't be found despite extensive searching, maybe we were a bit early. I had a look around the woodland to the north as I have seen Lady orchid here in the past but there didn't seem to be any this year.
Lots of Adonis and Common Blues, some Brown Arguses and Small Coppers. No skippers or whites which was a bit unexpected.

We called in at Wye, another Late Spider site but it seems we were sent to the wrong area. A chat with one of the nearby residents, a voluntary warden suggested that recent management has led to a decline and they have become hard to find in recent years. Again butterflies were numerous with Adonis and Common Blues being abundant. Two nice Hobbies hunting the southern slopes were nice to see.
In the afternoon we spent a couple of hours at Stodmarsh. It was a site I used to visit regularly in the late 80's / early 90's but neither of us had been here since the American Coot in 1996 (more recently we have been to the eastern section at Grove Ferry).
The main target here was Variable Damselfly, a species i don't get to see all that often, and usually one of the first blues out. I wasn't disappointed and encountered many individuals and found them generally easy to pick out among the familiar Azure Damselflies. Several Norfolk Hawkers were also seen, plus a few Broad Bodied and Four Spotted Chasers. I had hoped to see Scarce Chasers here as I know they are present in the area, but couldn't find any. Again a pair of Hobbies entertained us, but often came too close for the camera and only a few photos were worth keeping.