The Butterflies Appear

Each day, almost without thought, we take the same walk, crossing the A9 and the Golspie Burn and then wandering along the coast, with the beach and sea on one side and, on the other, a narrow strip of wild grassland separated from a barley field by a fence; and each time we walk we stop to sit on the same bench, looking out....

....across the same view, of the Dornoch and Moray Firths with the north coast of Easter-Ross hidden, today, under piles of threatening cumulus. 

We had company as we enjoyed the view, a single swallow which seemed determined to sit on the gate close behind us while the rest of its family, along with some house martins, hunted low across the barley and grasses.

The bench is one of the places we're using for our Big Butterfly Count surveys. On the first day we saw....

....four common blues, a species which favours the white clover flowers, while yesterday we counted three and today....

....we added two meadow browns to three blues. After the fifteen minutes allowed for the survey were up we also spotted two red admirals, a tortoiseshell, and four more blues.

One associates masses of cumulus and distant thunder with hot summer days but the temperatures here remain stubbornly low: as we set off for our walk this morning the air temperature was 16C, but with the wind slight it seemed much warmer than yesterday, which is probably why the butterflies were out in bigger numbers.