Orchid season

[puddleshark]

A walk through the streamside meadows near S. Farm, with the cuckoos calling. The wind full of down from the willow trees.





The normally damp meadows are bone dry and the ground baked hard. The poor buttercups, who like damp conditions, only ankle high.




A few orchids in the meadows. Maybe Common Spotted Orchids or a Marsh Orchids, or a hybrid of the two. I've given up trying to guess.


Pale Flax.


Common Blue butterflies nectaring on the Birdsfoot Trefoil.


Mother Shipton (Callistege mi). A very beautiful moth, even it is named for having the outline of a witch's face on its wings.


Emperor dragonfly on the gorse.

Comments

[heleninwales]

That's a beautiful orchid. Re dryness, many of the wild flowers are thriving, but the dandelions are really struggling.

[puddleshark]

Everything seems to be flowering a few weeks early here. There were foxgloves in flower on my walk the other day. I'm a bit worried that the bees will struggle to find anything in flower later in the summer.