Locally at least, the butterflies have been a bit hard to come by, numbers are well down, and some species have been very late to appear-I only saw my first Comma a few days ago! However things seem to be picking up a bit in the last few weeks despite the often strong winds and rain.
At the end of June I popped over to see Sarah and Ed. On the way I called in at a location near Buckland where a friend of mine had found a Lizard Orchid. Unfortunately the local farmer had strimmed the field edge and took the top off so I had to get in close with the phone camera.
A stroll around Shaftenhoe in the afternoon was fairly productive with decent numbers of Marbled Whites, Meadow Browns and skippers. Unfortunately the bee orchids had pretty much gone over, but pyramidals were abundant.
A few days later I took the opportunity of the warm weather and went for an evening walk around Aston End. It had been a few weeks since I had been there and the grass had really shot up because of the rain, and it was fun walking past and watching seeing large numbers of roosting butterflies explode around me. I had been put onto a small patch of Bee Orchids which were hard well hidden in the grass but looked really good. BTW the soft focus was down to fingerprints on the phone lens but it seems to have worked.
A few Dark green Fritillaries have been around here, in similar numbers to recent years.
It was getting a bit late and the light was dropping when I came across the Little Owl actively searching for food so I guess there were some chicks. A young fox cub in the same area was also entertaining.
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