Skippers & Scabious

[puddleshark]

Lulworth Skipper (Thymelicus acteon).

A little cooler today, but close and airless. Not a breath of wind, even on the hilltop. A layer of high white cloud like a sandwich-box lid over the world.

Took a walk along the Purbeck Hills, in search of summer things: butterflies & Bee Orchids.



Out along the foot of the hill: a narrow, shaded path overgrown with nettles and brambles and briars, and creeping tendrils of Old Man's Beard and White Bryony.


White Bryony (Bryonia dioica) flowers & tendrils.


Little candelabras of Nipplewort flowers (Lapsana communis) lighting the way through the shade.


Field Rose (Rosa arvensis).


Thick-legged Flower Beetle (Oedemera nobilis).


Ringlet butterflies (Aphantopus hyperantus) fluttering darkly along the hedgerows in their mourning cloaks.

Further along, the path emerges from the scrub and the shade, into open chalk grassland, where the bees and the butterflies and the beetles are battling over Knapweed and Field Scabious and Musk Thistle flowers:




Butterfly versus Beetle on Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis). (The butterfly won).


Marbled White (Melanargia galathea) and tiny bee, on Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans).




Large Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanus), on Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa).




Hedge Bedstraw (Galium mollugo).


Skipper, Scabious, and Smooth Hawksbeard (Crepis capillaris), maybe?


Common Blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus).

Alongside the chalk track that climbs the hill, Wild Thyme & Common Rock Rose in flower.


Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris) on Wild Thyme (Thymus polytrichus).


Common Rock-rose (Helianthemum nummularium). Lots of Red-tailed Bumblebees busy about the Rock-roses, which was good to see. It has not been a good year for bees so far.


The hilltop is looking marvellous this year - they obviously got the grazing regime just right. So many Pyramidal Orchids.


And even a few Bee Orchids on the short-grazed areas.

Comments

[bleodswean]

These photographic field guides of yours are out of this world! This is a fantastic collection!

[puddleshark]

Thank you!

I don't really enjoy this hot, close weather, but it is perfect for close-up photography (rather than our usual British summer days, with the wind making the flowers bob around madly, and the butterflies refusing to settle...)

[heleninwales]

I really like your flower photos because they're not just of the flower, you show the plants in context.

[puddleshark]

Thank you!

I love the richness of chalk grassland - the way there's such a tangle of flowers and grasses that it's impossible to photograph just one flower!

[mallorys_camera]

Amazing photos, as always. I wish I had a coffee table book filled with them.

The Bryony photo, in particular, speaks to me.

[puddleshark]

Thank you!

White Bryony is a favourite of mine - sending out those spiralling tendrils. I love plants with slightly sinister intentions!

[kaishin108]

Beautiful as always, yet that ringed butterfly really stands out.

I hope it cools down soon, ugh.

[puddleshark]

Thanks!

If it's like this in June, I don't know how I'm going to make it through July and August... :-(

We're just not used to this sort of relentlessly sunny weather in Britain.

[kaishin108]

It has been really cool here so far in June, (until today) so we are getting a late start. I hope your heat spell breaks and your trend is not persistent!