puddleshark

Driving down to the coast on Sunday, twice I was distracted by the latest bird scarers - hawk shapes on a tall bendy wire that flap in the wind in a most lifelike manner. The corner of my eye was fooled, so perhaps the pigeons and the crows too are fooled.

Left the car in the village car park, opposite the Square & Compass in Worth, and wandered down through the quiet early morning streets, roses flowering on the cottages, sparrows chirping under the eaves.

The path from Worth Matravers down to the quarry at Winspit and the sea. Strip lynchets - ridges left from medieval ploughing - on the hillsides.

Chalk-loving Nodding Thistles in the field.

Wild Carrot & Nipplewort.

From the fields, onto a path through a tunnel of vegetation. Tall silver mugwort, pink-flowered Great Willowherb, umbrellas of Hogweed, a cliff of brambles: all full of the movement of butterflies and bees and finches.

Goldenring Dragonfly.

Goldfinch.

Winspit Bottom. Combes - valleys leading to the sea - are often called Bottoms here: Winspit Bottom, Seacombe Bottom, and, further along the coast, the infamous Scratchy Bottom. The landscape is parched not because of drought - we're having a very wet summer - but because the soil is thin over the limestone rock here, near the coast.

Further down the combe, the chalk track to Winspit passes briefly into the shade of trees, before reaching the sea.

The coast path west, leading towards to St Aldhelm's head and a crow on a fencepost (who was not signposted).

The coast path east, climbing up from Winspit Bottom, to take the path along the cliffs to Seacombe.

Lobster pots being thrown overboard.

Chalk-loving Yellow-wort in flower on the cliffs.

Too late this year to see the Thrift in flower on the cliffs, but the Knapweed and the Nodding Thistles and the brambles were in flower, and all along the coast path there were butterflies: Marbled Whites, Meadow Browns, Small Skippers & Essex Skippers & Lulworth Skippers, Ringlets, Small Heaths. Cabbage White butterflies on the Wild Cabbage on the cliffs.

Marbled Whites fighting over the Knapweed.

Lulworth Skipper.

Essex Skipper on Wild Marjoram.

Company along the coast path. A Marbled White, two Skippers, a small black bee, bright yellow with pollen, & an orb-weaver spider (whom I only noticed when I got home and looked at the photo).

Where inland you might see one or two Small Skippers on a bramble bush, here by the cliffs, where the land has never been "improved" for agriculture, there will be a dozen Small Skippers on a bramble bush.

And the larks hover and sing.

Video - click once to go the Flickr, and once to play.

Skylark.

The sea not really blue, though my camera kept insisting it was. More a mix of blue and silver and dark grey, as the clouds came and went.

At Seacombe, I turned back inland, taking the path along Seacombe Bottom, which makes a long, long climb back up to Worth Matravers.

Succumbing to weariness and the valley bottom warmth, lay for a while on the short-grazed grass and the dried sheep poo, watching the red-tailed bumblebees coming and going on the clover and the bird's-foot trefoil. Wren song, goldfinch song, yellowhammers singing of cheese. Very peaceful.

Video - click through to Flickr to play.

Houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale), with it's lovely two-tone flowers.

But eventually necessary to re-lace my boots, pick myself up, recommence the long uphill trudge back to Worth.

Back at Worth, the white ducks now on their pond, and the tea rooms open, but there's a long queue out the door. I decide not to risk joining the queue - too much Covid about here at the moment.