At last we have some calm, sunny weather, forecast to carry on though the rest of this week, though we are likely to miss the extremely high temperatures being recorded elsewhere. So, to welcome the sunshine, we drove out for a walk at Littleferry to find the tide coming in fast and hardly anything of interest along the strand line so we....
....spent most of our walk on the links where, for the first time in ages, we enjoyed a crowd of butterflies, particularly on those areas where the vegetation cover is short. There are no sheep grazing on this land so this is a natural feature which, perhaps because of the many small flowers growing on it - like wild thyme, eyebright, marsh cranesbill, kidney vetch and white clover - suit the butterflies.
The most abundant butterfly was the small heath. They spend much of their time arguing amongst themselves and chasing off....
....the common blues, which were almost as abundant, though very much more eye-catching.
Painted ladies were there too, in much smaller numbers, but looking very moth-eaten. This has been a year in which they have been one of the few species to do well in our rather cooler, damper weather - which seems strange in a butterfly which hails from North Africa.
The highlight of the walk was seeing this pair of fritillaries - I'm not sure which species - in such a state of high excitement, presumably because they were in the process of mating, that they completely ignored us.
The orchid season is, sadly, past is best with many of the flowers beginning to die back but there are enough to help support the few burnet moths that are still on the wing.
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