Butterflies and Insects

I wasn't feeling all that great on Saturday and decided not to do much. However Sunday felta bit better and the weather, which had been very hot and humid was rather more tolerable so I thought about taking a walk around Aston End. In the end I managed to complete my usual five mile circuit and didn't feel all that bad afterwards.
Over the previous week, I was starting to get regular visits by Meadow Browns and also a couple of Painted Ladies, Gatekeepers plus the occasional white so I was expecting to see a lot. It can be a bit hit and miss as the walk takes in some busy lanes with high hedges usually severely hacked and slashed every year), large areas of intensive agriculture and horse paddocks. Also the river Beane valley is always bone dry with only the occasional winter run off leading to any sort of water flow. However there are several large areas of set aside, some wide field margins and a long roadside stretch that is sympathetically managed so it can be quite good. Unfortunately one huge uncultivated field that was starting to look like a decent bit of chalk downland has been out of bounds for many years (though I don't think it was ever in bounds but the gate was always open and there wasn't a nasty barbed wire fence to negotiate either).
I didn't find any Speckled Woods in the plantation which was a bit unusual so the first butterflies I found were Meadow Browns once I got past Aston End. This proved by far the commonest species and I probably saw several hundred in total. There were only a few Ringlets-far less than expected, and also some Gatekeepers and Small heaths. Marbled Whites were seen in various spots, maybe 30 in total and some rather faded Painted Ladies as well. There were plenty of Small Tortoiseshells, Red Admirals and Commas but for some reason, no Peacocks. Obviously with most of the fields full of rape seed Large, Small and Green Veined Whites were everywhere.
I had a hard time with the skippers, there weren't many and only one or two were approachable-one definite Small, and a couple of Large, though I would normally see some Essex here as well. Only one Common Blue was seen, and no Brown Argus or Small Coppers, though these are the species I used to see in the out of bounds field.
I wasn't very successful photographing the butterflies so I stuck the macro lens and spent a long time around the umbellifers trying to get decent images of the various bugs, flies wasps and beetles. Cant say for sure what any are, though I ought to be able to identify the longhorn as Ive photographed them before. Having mislaid an identification guide hasn't helped.